


By Honeycomb We Measure Our Worth

by WatteauYouDoing



Series: Our Wishes [1]
Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: (i mean OBVIOUSLY), Alcoholism, An Extravaganza of Shane's Self Pity, F/M, Farmer is huge and awkward and into the occult, Jas loves flowers, Magic, Slow Burn, anxiety and depression, honestly shane's mad about a lot of things, shane is mad about it showing up though, sorry not sorry but i love magic and witches and wizards it's gonna show up, tags will be added as story progresses, updates on Fridays
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-11 16:46:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 34,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11718423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WatteauYouDoing/pseuds/WatteauYouDoing
Summary: The farmer has better things to do than to talk to him, Shane thinks, his firmly held belief supported by her complete inability to even look him in the eyes. Unfortunately, Jas seems to have taken a fancy to this odd woman and her plot in the woods, and Shane finds himself dragged into an uncomfortable acquaintanceship with her purely out of a desire to not see his goddaughter cry.Things go from there, as they always do. Why is it always so hard to care?





	1. Prologue ~ A Story of First and Second Impressions

The first time Shane met the farmer, he briefly thought he was having some sort of alcohol induced fever dream.

No one could be that tall. No one could be that _muscular._ Even in the state he was in, with bleary eyes and lips tingling from alcohol, he could see that the woman looming over him had shoulders that could build mountains and hands that could crush stones in their rough, furrowed palms. Her clothing was simple, exposing the musculature of a lumber-yard worker, and seeing this strange being juxtaposed against the familiar backdrop of the saloon? It seemed so wrong that he could only think he was hallucinating.

Giants didn’t exist in the realm of men, and there was no doubt that she was a _giant._

He forgot what she said to him almost as soon as she said it, the words an ephemeral wisp lost in his drunken haze, but it was clear that she expected some sort of reply. She stared at him, the golden scraps of her eyes sloped downwards and framed by a dark, prominently featured face, and Shane blanched at the sight. What did he say? What did he _do?_ How did he react to this unearthly happenstance, a new person showing up in this closed off little cesspool of a town?

Truthfully, he just wanted her to go away as fast as possible.

It was partially because he wanted everyone to leave him alone, yes, but also partially because something about the way she towered over him shook him to his core, like she was some sort of judicator sent by Yoba to punish him for his sins. Sitting in front of this plain-faced, dour looking farmer made Shane feel small, weak - _pathetic,_ and it reminded him wholly of his own inadequacies. Before her, he was nothing, and it made it easy to turn away from her, back to his beer, and growl some sort of spiteful, sharp reply.

He didn’t remember what exactly he said – it didn’t matter enough to recall. But he knew it was cruel, and he knew it was enough to drive away any aspirations of comradery between the two of them. She was new, he knew. Probably introducing herself to the town, like he’d been told to expect, and he knew that he ought to make it clear what to expect from him.

There was silence. He stared into his glass, the color reminding him briefly of her eyes, and thought no more of her as her heavy footsteps plodded off into the dark.

For a little over two seasons, Shane got what he wanted, and never again did the farmer speak to him. Indeed, she gave him a wide berth, avoiding his gaze entirely on the rare occasions when they passed each other on the street and encountered each other before Gus’ bar. However, one Thursday, near the beginning of fall, Shane stumbled out of his room around noon and found her sitting at the kitchen table with a small china teacup in her hand.

That, though he didn’t know it then, was to be the day that predicated Shane’s slow slide directly into Hell.

 

* * *

 

“Shane,” Marnie chirped, worry cast over her features as she stood up from her chair. “How are you feeling? Can I get you anything?”

 Shane held up a hand, stilling her and shaking his head. “I’m fine,” he croaked, throat stiff and sore and nose clogged full of snot. The flu, unfortunately enough, was going around, and nothing about the way he’d lived his life had lead him to possess an immune system strong enough to avoid succumbing. A pity, though it didn’t really matter. Vomiting and feeling like shit were two of his most frequent pastimes... at least right now it wasn’t his fault. “I’m just getting some water.”

“Are you sure? We have orange juice, apple juice, I could make you some eggs – or oatmeal, if you’re having trouble stomaching food…”

He shook his head again, a slow, crusty swing, and continued staring at the elephant in the room.

For a second, the farmer met his bleary, confused gaze, her expression flat and unreadable as the deserts of the west, before she set her cup down with an exaggerated gentleness. Somehow, that made him even more aware of her ridiculous size – she had to be six and a half-feet tall at _least_ , and she was built like someone who could lift a cow. Even as she hunched her shoulders inward, she dwarfed her chair, and paired with Marnie, his short, stubby aunt? It was comical in a way that didn’t much make Shane feel like laughing.

He noticed more details now about her now, seeing her lit up by the afternoon sunlight steaming through the window. The fluffiness of her tawny brown hair, the crookedness of her prominent nose, and the shadows carved into her solemn expression all gave her a… rough quality, which contrasted with her large, soft mouth and gently sloped jawline.

Mostly, though, Shane just felt uncomfortable seeing her in his kitchen, sitting in the chair that, when he _did_ drag himself home for meals, was his. It reminded him of how many hours he spent away and the lives tumbling around him as he drank. Was this a regular thing? Was the farmer… one of Marnie’s friends? How often did she come over, while Shane was sacrificing himself on the altar of Joja-Mart’s sea of Listerine-white floors? Was this _normal?_

Despite his protests, Marnie turned and bustled into the kitchen. “You really should try to eat something, Shane – even if it’s just some fruit! We have fresh peaches; Bear brought them over… oh!”

She poked her head out of the kitchen, looking between Shane and the strange woman with her hands in her lap. “Have you two met?”

Shane expected her to reply, to oust him as an inconsiderate asshole (as if that was ever a secret), but she was silent, staring at the table with a reserved distance on her features. Shane, for his own part, had no idea what to say – could he really call what had happened that spring night a meeting? He barely remembered it even. Just the brief twist of hurt in her mouth before she turned and walked away.

He hadn’t even recalled her name, and he most certainly never told her his.

Marnie seemed to pick up on the awkward atmosphere, and with a gentle smile, she indicated the farmer with an upturned palm. “Shane, this is Bear, the girl who’s taken over the old Ellicott plot. She’s Jeremiah’s granddaughter. Bear, this is Shane, my nephew. He helps me with the animals.”

Shane’s mouth twisted, wondering for a moment if Jeremiah Ellicott had been as staggeringly tall as – _Bear?_ Was that seriously her name? If so, it was pretty precognizant of her parents, given that she fit her namesake to a tee.

“Hello,” the farmer said, her voice a low rumble like the beginnings of a rockslide. She looked at him for only a brief second, flicking her amber eyes up before she studiously examined the light glinting off the edge of the china. Everything about her body-language screamed ‘ _please don’t look at me, you disgusting drunk.’_

Shane mostly complied, though he had to be marginally friendly for Marnie’s sake. “Hey,” he said, punctuating his sentence with an ugly sounding cough. “Good to, uh. Meet you.”

Bear nodded, but said nothing more after that, and the room was drowned in another thick, pungent silence before Marnie’s sympathetic nature caused her to intervene.

“It’s not surprising you haven’t met each other; Bear’s been very busy cleaning up that old farm! It’s lovely now, though. How’re the cows, dear? Is Daffodil doing well?”

“I have her outside now.” Bear gave her first non-monosyllabic reply, and a crackle of fondness entered her otherwise flat voice. “Since it’s sunny. With the chickens and Wisteria.”

“Ahh, I bet that’s nice.”

Shane let out another ugly series of coughs before shuffling into the kitchen. Predictably, Marnie was already fixing him something to eat, and near a glass of orange juice sat two, big fat orange capsules full of blessed decongestants. Mutely, he grabbed them in his palm, stuffing them into his mouth one at a time. Usually he’d try to fight Marnie’s attempts to take care of him, but he simply didn’t have the energy today.

Behind him, he heard a creak of wood and the scraping of a chair against the floor. He glanced back, once more feeling the uncomfortable pressure of having a stranger in his space, though Bear didn’t even look at him, instead focused entirely on Marnie.

“Um,” she began, just before setting her cup in the sink with a very delicate clink. “I need to finish work. Thank you for lunch.”

Every sound felt carefully measured, as if she was only allotted a certain number of words per day, though Marnie seemed entirely used to her terseness, as she didn’t seem at all taken aback by the woman’s sudden statement. “Oh, thank _you_ for coming over! Give everyone my regards, will you? I’m so happy to know that everything’s going well over there.”

Distantly, Shane grasped for a faded memory of a conversation. Marnie had said business had picked up a bit, hadn’t she? It was probably this woman’s doing, if their talk was any indication. Bear didn’t provide any more clues, only giving Marnie a simple nod before turning and plodding off.

She didn’t even glance back at him.

Shane wasn’t sure how he felt, being completely snubbed like that, but honestly? It was probably for the best. Marnie kept her eyes on her though, watching her duck through the doorway and out into the autumn air, and only looked back at the ‘breakfast’ she was preparing when the front door clicked softly and left the house silent.

Shane pawed a dirty, crusty tissue out of the pockets of his pajama pants and blew his nose.

“Bear’s a sweet girl,” Marnie assured him with her normal, quasi-overbearing geniality, and then bustled over to set the bowl of oatmeal before him. “Very shy, but very sweet. You should get to know her, sometime. I’m sure you’d get on.”

“Mmn,” Shane grunted, staring absently at the doorway. What the hell did someone that big have to be _shy_ about? And Marnie should know by now that trying to pawn him off on the townsfolk was a lost cause. He didn’t _get on_ with anyone. 

Still, she tried again, as if this time, things might be different. “She’s coming over again on Saturday. If you’re feeling any better by then, why not join us for lunch?

With a slow motion – he could practically hear his joints creak – Shane looked down at the spoon by his hand. He picked it up in a daze, grunted again, and began spooning mushed grains into his mouth. It sort of helped his throat a little, though he had a vague certainty that he’d be puking it all back up again later. “Thanks,” he rasped. “For the food.”

Realizing that this served as his reply, Marnie sighed, but didn’t press the issue. She’d used to, in the beginning, but now her attempts at getting him to socialize were half-hearted at best. There was only so long one could beat their head against a brick wall, after all.

Shane was glad. He knew he was a lost cause. It was better if they all left him be, leave him to his space – forget about him, just as he so desperately tried to forget about himself.


	2. A Story of Third Impressions, Because the Third Time’s the Charm, Right?

Shane still remembered the old stories his grandmother used to tell him, of trolls, goblins, and other unsightly things that lived underneath the bridge. They used to make him nervous, whenever his parents drove in the tunnels through the mountain; for some reason, those dark corridors with yellow lights whirling past the car window reminded him of those ancient tales, like he was trapped in a prolonged liminal expanse beneath that dark, fabled bridge. Like at any moment they were going to encounter a mountain beast, woken from its thousand-year long slumber by the whir and hum of automobiles whooshing through its domain.

Right now, Shane felt like one of those craggy, moss-ridden monsters, dribbling slime and pus and snot. He felt guilty for even emerging from his influenza-hole, but he _had_ to clean up, at least a little bit. It was practically a moral obligation at this point.

Easing open the door, Shane took a furtive glance into the kitchen before venturing forth properly. He remembered what Marnie said about the farmer coming over on Saturday, and sure as the devil’s business, it was Saturday still. Yet, the small room was empty – at least, predominantly so. There were no sounds of talking and laughter, like he’d feared there might be when he’d first awoken from his stupor, but he did hear a gentle stream of water pouring into the metal basin of the sink and the clink, clink of dishes as they were set off to the side to dry. He must have slept in enough to miss “Bear’s” appearance, then.

Thank Yoba.

“Shane! You’re awake?” Marnie called, and he heard the faucet shut off before the plump figure of his aunt bustled into view. Her apron was wet, stained with water from her cleaning, and her fingers were reddened from the bristle-brush and soap. Her smile gleamed much like chipped-china and well-loved cutlery, and once again, Shane thought to himself that he didn’t deserve her consideration. “How are you feeling?”

“Bit better,” he replied, though his own voice betrayed him. A rasp still clung to it, a raw feeling that stained his throat and made him want to surgically remove his nose, but he’d actually managed to sleep through the night, so that was something. “What time is it?”

“It’s about three or so. Here, sit, I’ll make you something to eat.” Marnie beckoned him forward, and Shane followed her, at least… until a spare glance towards his door made him pause.

“What the…?”

Shane trailed off, his brow furrowing into a perplexed squint. He wasn’t a man who much fancied decorating; that’d take far too much time, effort, and motivation than he was willing to put into anything. However, it seemed that _someone_ had taken it upon themselves put the entrance of his room through a beautification process, whereupon they’d attached countless multicolored post-it notes to the knotty, alder-wood door. Confused, Shane shifted on his heel, leaning forward and peering at the strange handiwork arranged in cheerful, pastel hues before him.

_Get well soon, Shane!_

_I hope you feel better!_

_Get lots of rest so you can play with me again!_

…and so on. Shane read these well-meaning, pure sentences written in a very careful curl, and couldn’t help but smile as he took in the assortment of flowers, stars, and patches of glittery glue framing the heartfelt well-wishes. It was clear who the culprit was, and he could only imagine it had taken her the entire morning to assemble. Jas really was staggeringly creative, wasn’t she?

Daisies. Roses. Daffodils. Lilacs. Poppies, and, of course – even little fairy roses, which had been expertly cut to size and stuck in a border on his door. She’d had to have had help with getting some of the taller ones up there. So entranced was he by the tableau that he was completely unaware that Marnie had come up right behind him.

“Jas was very insistent that she finish it all up before you woke,” she said, her voice warm and fond. She’d only known the girl properly for… about a year now, but Marnie had already become very protective over her nephew’s goddaughter. “Said it’d be bad luck if you saw it before it was done.”

Shane let out a soft snort. He wasn’t sure where she’d gotten that from… Vincent? Penny? That artist girl who had her cabin down to the south, perhaps? – but he could imagine Jas crossing her arms and imperially stating that no one would see her masterpiece before it was completed. “’S nice. I like the, uh…”

Shane gestured blandly, not really sure how to articulate this odd, paternal pride filling his chest. “All the colors. Did she really do this all herself?”

Marnie smiled somewhat enigmatically, and Shane wasn’t really sure how to take that. “She worked very hard. She’s outside, if you’d like to go thank her. I’m certain it’d mean a lot.”

Shane coughed a bit, then scratched his stubbly cheek in contemplation. While he didn’t particularly want Jas seeing him in this state, nor did he really want to expose her to illness, he could perfectly picture her slaving over his decorated door with an intense fervor … and he also knew that it’d be a total dick move to ignore her dedication. So – despite not feeling well, and despite the general malaise that came from the certainty that he _didn’t deserve this,_ Shane nodded in regards to Marnie’s suggestion.

“Yeah. I, uh… okay.”

For some reason, his aunt seemed very pleased with herself as she watched him go. “I’ll have something ready for you when you get back. Do you think you can eat something solid? I could make you an omelet. Ham and cheese?”

“You don’t gotta…” He trailed off, but Shane knew it was a lost cause. She’d already gone to the fridge and was getting out some eggs. Marnie’s capacity for kindness only increased proportionally with his own rejections of it. If he said he didn’t want an omelet, she’d make _two_ just to spite him. It was better to just give up early, rather than withstand a long-standing siege of overbearing generosity.

…It was… odd. Shane wasn’t used to it. In the beginning, it had been hard to even comprehend. But Marnie was a being that seemed to thrive off of taking care of others; it was probably why she loved animals so much. People would betray you. Animals never would.

Sometimes, Shane wished he’d been born a literal chicken rather than a metaphorical one. That way, he wouldn’t have to repay _this_ with his inevitable drunken decline.

Man. He seriously couldn’t go for two seconds without meandering into a swamp of his own self-derision, now could he? Telling himself to act like a reasonable, pleasant person for two seconds, he opened the door, and faced the crisp, autumn afternoon that awaited beyond.

It was sickening how beautiful it was outside. Dappled sunlight flickered on grass and across the red tiled roof of Marnie’s home. The breeze rustled through the trees, shifting the leaves in a miniature chorus. The ground crunched beneath his feet, death and dryness splayed over the lively bounty of fall, and Shane squinted scanning, the nigh-sickening idyllicism of the scene for any sign of his wayward goddaughter.

He heard her before he saw her, although he saw her soon after. Much to his shock – though it should have been an obvious conclusion to draw – she wasn’t alone. No, sitting on the ground, her arm propped on her knee and a wicker basket of flowers at her side, was farmer Bear.

They hadn’t noticed him yet, which was good, because Shane needed a moment to feel _weird._

It wasn’t just Marnie, then? Jas had, without him even noticing, also become endeared to this enormous stranger? Jas, who had trouble uttering a simple hello to even the kindest and gentlest of the valley’s residents upon first meeting them…? Shy, timid, nervous Jas was, on this beautiful fall day, bathing in the sunlight by the rippling river and laughing with innocent delight at something this stranger was saying? Well – no. The farmer wasn’t a stranger, was she? It was Shane who was the stranger, and who hadn’t been around enough the past few seasons to even be aware of what his makeshift family was getting up to. 

Yoba… had Jas _ever_ looked that relaxed around him?

“This one is called bee balm,” Bear said, speaking to Jas in the educational and forthright manner of a teacher. Rolling a stem in-between her fingers, she indicated a bright, crimson blossom, and he noticed a few more of the same species gracing the top of the basket. “Or, some people call them monarda. They’re used to disinfect cuts, cure sore throats, and to clean teeth. They’re, um. Related to mint. The leaves smell nice – here.”

She lifted the plant to Jas’ face, who took an exploratory sniff. “Kind of, uh… citrus-y, right? Like an orange, or a lime? There’s a fruit called a bergamot orange that smells like this, and because of that, another name for bee balm is bergamot.”

Jas let out an impressed noise, and sniffed the plant again before pulling back with a smile. “Will you put that in the crown, too?”

“Sure.” It was only then that Shane noticed what was in Bear’s hands, though it was understandable that he’d missed it before, considering that most of her work was blocked by her broad shoulders. Still, he caught a glimpse as she moved – a chain of flowers, their stems woven together in a ringlet. Flower crowns, huh?

He’d only ever seen those in movies…

“Why are they called bee balm? Is there a story about that?”

“Well…”

Bear trailed off, and then – without really thinking about it – Shane shifted in place, switching his weight from one foot to the other. With the motion, the leaves under his feet crinkled, and Bear jumped at that, turning her body around to face him.

Shane wasn’t sure what to do, what to think. So, instead, he froze like a startled rabbit, lingering in place as he was confronted by a wide pair of amber eyes.

“Uncle Shane!” Jas exclaimed, breaking the momentary spark of paralyzing awkwardness, and she stood, running toward him in an enthusiastic splay of pretty purple fabric. For a moment, Shane was certain he was going to be tackled, and the possibility filled him with a cold sort of dread, but Jas skidded to a stop right before him, arms splayed out like a ballerina doll and a sunny smile on her face. “How are you feeling? Are you better yet?”

“I – _agh,”_ Shane coughed, a wet, involuntary sound wracking through his body. Still, though, he tried to smile, because the insecurity born from seeing _some odd person_ sitting next to _his_ _ward_ made him want to at least try. “Yeah, I’m a lot better, kiddo. I saw all the notes and stuff you left me – you must have gotten up early, huh?”

“Yeah! Well, sorta.” Jas linked her hands behind her back, and then turned her dazzling smile to Bear, who still sat entirely motionless beside the water… like she thought that moving would put her in danger of being eaten by a passing crocodile. “Miss Bear helped me! She used the scissors to cut things out, and she drew a lot of the flowers too!”

There was silence. Shane didn’t know what to say to this person, and for her own part, Bear seemed like she wanted to be anywhere but here. She wouldn’t even look at him, her eyes turned to the ground and her face a passive, impenetrable wall.

Jas filled in the blanks, taking his hand and pulling him over. “You should make flower crowns with us! Miss Bear was showing me how. She knows so much about them! She’s like Aunt Marnie, but with plants!”

“…Really,” Shane said carefully, feeling intensely uneasy about this new proposition but not really sure how to slip out without crushing his goddaughter’s spirit. “I guess that makes sense, for a farmer.”

“It’s more than that; she’s a genius! She knows _everything!_ Maybe even more than Demetrius.”

“I… like plants a lot,” Bear replied, and it seemed for a moment like she was going to say more, but her mouth stilled as soon as she looked at Shane again. The awkwardness was palatable, though Jas was blissfully aware of it as she tugged on Shane’s arm to sit.

“Did you know that daffodils were named after a man who wanted to marry his own reflection? His name was Narcissus, and he got so sad when he realized he’d never see anything more beautiful than himself that he turned into a flower!” Jas beamed, and then pointed at a white, multi-petaled blossom in the basket. “And daisies are in the same family as _lettuce!_ Oh, did you know that tomatoes are related to nightshade? The plant the elf hunter made poison out of in the _Thieves and Trees_ books?" 

“…No, I didn’t, kiddo.”

“Well, they are! And the name scientists call them, uh… what was it… Lysta…?”

“Lycopersicum,” the farmer supplied quietly.

“Yes, lycopersicum!” Jas stumbled a little over the word, but didn’t seem too distraught about it. “It means wolf peach, because you can make a potion out of night shade – and tomatoes are related to night shade - that turns you into a _werewolf!”_

“Please don’t try that,” Shane said, and Jas laughed.

“Of course not, silly, I’m not a witch. But did you _also_ know that…”

Jas babbled endlessly, parroting back facts with a vivacious intensity that made it clear why she continually got such high mark’s in Penny’s makeshift classes. Mostly, Shane pretended to listen, nodding at the appropriate points to keep the torrent flowing. It wasn’t that he didn’t care – he did, at least, care that Jas was excited –  but he was just too exhausted and woozy to even begin processing the floral onslaught… and his mind kept getting stuck on the woman a space beyond him.

Tense. Stiff. Wouldn’t even look his way, and focused so thoroughly on the flowers in her hands that he was worried they’d burst into flames. He could only imagine what she was thinking, and the anxious buzz reverberating in his brain kept supplying new and unique pejoratives that she was surely cursing him with right now.

He watched her hands work, surprisingly dexterous despite their size, and he knew she was working so diligently because she wanted to finish up and then slip away, far, far away from him. Yoba, he wanted to leave, but Jas had worked so hard for him, and –

And maybe he was feeling insecure right now, worrying about his standing in her life.

It was obvious, really. He hadn’t been around, so of course her affections would stray. How couldn’t he have come to the conclusion that she’d replace him if he spent enough time avoiding her? He couldn’t be the number one person in her life forever – hell, when she grew up, would she think of him just like he thought of his dad? As a depressing, absent man who, when he was around, was always drunk off his ass?

It made him nauseous in a way that was vibrantly distinct from the flu, and in a knee-jerk reaction, he’d wanted to combat it by spending at least a little time with his goddaughter. But who the hell was he kidding? What was he accomplishing by being here, other than making the farmer suffer? He should just –

“Uncle Shane?”

“Y-yeah?” He stuttered, suddenly ripped from his internal loop of self-derision and left blinking absently in the warm autumn light.

“…You weren’t listening, were you?”

She sounded petulant, put-out, suspicious, and Shane scrambled to recall what she’d been talking about. Shit, had she asked him a question? What had it been? What –

“’S probably a hard decision to make,” Bear spoke up, voice oddly soft for her large, broad frame. “There are so many. You like fairy roses the best, right?”

And just like that, the pressure was off him.

“Yeah!” Jas sat up straight, a dazzling smile bursting across her face. “They smell so nice, and they come in such pretty colors! The flower shop near where I used to live sold them. One time, for my birthday, mom and dad – “

As suddenly as it’d come, her happiness melted away, a quiet, solemn contemplation settling onto her features like the ebbing tide.

Jas didn’t talk about them much, her parents. Hell, _Shane_ didn’t talk about them much, because it hurt to remember a time when he didn’t follow his memories down into the bottom of a glass. He wanted to say something, wanted so desperately to chase away this melancholy settling into the air, but his throat caught. What would a real father do right now?

“Jas,” he tried, but his words fell short. Instead, he reached out to touch her shoulder, feeling like he was reaching out for something something fragile, like glass.

The farmer’s expression hadn’t changed during this exchange, her amber eyes soft and her mouth neutral, but she dipped her gaze down to the flower crown in her hand and – gently – she placed it on Jas’ head. The blossoms shone against her dark hair, a menagerie of color set against the dark strands, and though Bear didn’t smile, the way she leaned in, making herself a bit smaller, seemed kind. “I’ll be growing them this autumn; I already have the seeds planted. Would you like to know why?”

Raising a hand to feel the soft petals, Jas looked up at Bear and in surprise before nodding. It was much more muted than her earlier excitement, but Jas was such a _strong_ girl. Maybe it was because she was young, but… she had bounced back relatively quickly after having moved to Pelican Town. Much more quickly than Shane who, it could be argued, was even more of a shitty mess than he’d ever been in his life.

Perhaps it was because she kept herself busy. Lessons, adventuring, playing with Vincent – all Shane did was work and drink, and it wasn’t like restocking aisles at Joja did much to occupy the mind.

“Fairies like sweets. Honey, cream, sugar, and, most especially, flowers that have a sweet smell. It’s why fairy roses are called what they are; fairies like them the best. It’s even said that the queen of the fairies fills her pillowcases with their petals.”

Bear scooted forward, closer to the water, and rested her weight on one arm. Her other hand dipped into the river, making swirling ripples in the forest stream as she talked. “Some of them are in the forest, some live in the world beyond the water. But when fairies like you and your home, good things happen. That’s why I grow the roses. They’re for luck. And the honey made from their nectar…”

She pulled her hand out, and Shane watched the droplets glitter as they fell to the ground. “Is the best in the world.”

Enraptured by the mental image of fairy blessings and secret creatures, Jas leaned in. “Have you seen them? Fairies?”

Bear pursed her mouth, almost like she was hovering on the edge of saying something. Then, she seemed to notice Shane again, who’d been staring without really realizing it. He’d been trying to figure out if she actually bought the bullshit she was spouting, or if it was just fanciful words to keep a child entertained. She _seemed_ sincere about it, with a forthright sort of intensity that was honestly staggering, but it was hard to tell.

Everyone lied to children. It was natural.

Either it was embarrassment for the lengths she went to indulge a child, or just generalized reticence around him, but she seemed to tailor her reply differently then she might otherwise have. “No.”

Jas made a thoughtful noise. “Probably because you lived in the city. Maybe you’ll see some here?”

“Maybe.”

“You used to live in the city?”

Both girls looked at Shane, and he immediately regretted the surprise which made him speak. _Duh,_ of course she lived somewhere else beforehand; Bear had only moved here in the spring. But something about trying to imagine her, with her prominent height and her odd manner, surviving in… well. Any metropolitan area, really, was kind of absurd. She must have stuck out like a sore thumb.

The way she swept her eyes to the side indicated that was, perhaps, the case. “…Was born in one, yeah.”

He scrunched his nose, squinting at her, but he didn’t get a chance to question her further. He’d been doing pretty well on the whole “not hacking up his lung” front, but good fortune could only last so long. His body shuddered, and he shielded his mouth with his elbow, trying to keep it off of Jas.

Shane was successful, but the display transformed Jas’ expression to one of worry. “Uncle Shane, are you alright?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he groaned, wishing that he could just crawl into a hole and die. That, at least, would end his suffering. 

“I know! Here!”

Jas lifted the wreathe of flowers off of his head, and then, without hesitation, deposited the adornment onto him. He blinked back at her in dull confusion, then reached up, touching it as Jas clapped.

“Those will make you feel better! Flowers make everyone feel better.”

…Okay. Maybe he could take a rain-check on the whole funeral plan. While he didn’t believe in holistic medicine, homeopathy, and those weird ‘natural remedies’ Emily had recommended to him time and time again, something about seeing Jas happy _did_ make him feel better. Though, that was short-lived, as most happiness in his life was.

“Miss Bear, Shane gets sick all the time. Do you think you could bring him flowers so he feels better?”

“Uh,” Bear said, and Shane was familiar with that dull tone of panic, having felt it time and time again himself when trying to wriggle out of uncomfortable responsibilities.

“Jas… I’m sure she’s way too busy to -”

“No!” Jas interrupted, pouting. “Miss Bear is _really_ nice. She always brings Marnie fresh jelly for my toast! I’m sure she’ll bring you flowers. Right?”

Jas was impossible to deny; Shane knew that as well as anyone. She seemed like a mild, timid kid on the surface, but when she wanted her way, she got it. 

Bear gave in almost immediately under pressure. “I… could do that.”

“Great! You should make him more flower crowns, too.” Pleased, Jas leaned over the water, and pointed at the rippling surface. “He looks really good. See?" 

Drawn to his reflection in an attempt to go with the conversational flow, Shane leaned forward, peering at the shapes flickering in the stream. He wasn’t a stranger to this sort of thing; when he was drinking alone on the docks, he often looked over the edge and contemplated himself. The blurriness of the dark water smoothed away much of the travesty of his appearance – the dark shadows under his dead, dull eyes, the unshaven stubble on his jawline, and his skin made sallow from a diet of frozen pizza and boxed pepper poppers.

Still, despite these distinguishing markers of his shittiness not being immediately apparent, he could still tell he didn’t fit in with the two images beside him. Jas practically glowed, smiling and leaning over the water, and Bear – though he had difficulty picturing her expressing any form of joy – had a certain sort of nobility to her, like she was solid. Immovable. Steady, nothing like the dumpster fire of his own life.

His only redeeming quality was the stupid flower crown on his head.

He didn’t really belong here, he knew that. Yet, he looked at Jas, giving her a tired smile as he lied to preserve this fragile happiness. “Yeah. I feel like a real princess, kiddo.”

Jas laughed, and grabbed another handful of flowers from the basket, beginning to talk about them again. Bear remained quiet, watching, and though he was certain she had a million other things she’d rather be doing, she remained there at Jas’ side. She was probably putting up with it for the girl’s sake, masking her own disgust out of consideration for her happiness.

Everyone lied to children, himself included, and he sighed as he looked back into the water. 


	3. A Story of Flowers, and Those Who Love Them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized that Friday would be a better day for me to update in the long run. So, have the chapter a day early!

This was a mistake. His entire life was a mistake. How the hell had he gotten roped into this?

“C’mon, Shane! Hurry, hurry!”

Jas danced before him, arms extended in as she twirled in a childish pirouette before skipping farther along the path to the farm. She was dusty already, her shoes scuffed and her stockings looking a bit browner than when they’d left Marnie’s house, but she didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. She was just so happy to be visiting farmer Bear, and so delighted to be dragging Shane along for the ride!

He’d tried to slip out of it. _Really._ But she’d woken him up that morning with pleading eyes, and guilt had burrowed itself too deeply into his heart to say no.

It’d just be one visit, he promised himself, hands in his pockets as he trudged along behind her. He’d stay for an hour, maybe less, before saying something about promising to help Marnie back home and then slipping away to the saloon. That way, he could do something to keep Jas happy, to - … to keep her from eventually hating him, while also sparing the farmer from having to deal with his sorry ass on her property.

And, well – it’d spare himself from having to deal with her in return. Despite what Marnie had said, she kind of seemed like a huge weirdo. She didn’t talk much, but when she did, it was about flowers and spirits and things that he just couldn’t relate to. It was like being an alternate-universe version of Emily.

Fall was in full swing, the leaves around him shining in a panorama of glistening gold and deep ruby red, with more browns and yellows scattered about the tree’s roots. The path below his feet was… worn, of a sort, the swaths of trampled-down tan dirt framed by yellowed grass making for an easy enough journey. Was this area truly well-trafficked enough that nature hadn’t been able to overcome the trail? He supposed people did come out on hikes, and he similarly supposed that the farmer must walk this way quite often.

It was truly a testament to how much of a social recluse Shane was that he didn’t see the woman more than he did. They lived _right_ by each other, at least – the trail that terminated at the edge of her property was quite short. He supposed there was quite a walk to her farmhouse from there, but that didn’t really matter. It was still her stomping grounds, as it were. She’d obviously wander around his neck of the woods.

Ugh. The more he thought about it, the more dumb he felt for not having predicted that his little makeshift “family” would get to know her well. With a strangely bitter feeling in his heart, he followed after his goddaughter.

Curiously, something caught her eye enough to halt her mission, and he quirked his eyebrow as he caught up to her. She was standing in front of a slat of wood topped with a sign, and once he got closer, he could see it was lacquered and carved. The painted words spelled out _‘Honeycomb Farm’_ cleanly and clearly, and it looked like, from the lack of wear on the wood, that it’d been put up recently _._

“She made the sign! Bear told me she was gonna. Doesn’t it look good? Hehe!” Jas reached over, grabbing his sleeve and pointing at it, showing all her teeth off in a grin.

“Sure does,” Shane said, and then looked up. To his surprise, the woman in question was not far beyond.

The farmer leaned on her hoe, one hand overlapping the other as she took a small respite. He could see the shine of her sweat-soaked skin even from where he stood at the mouth of the pathway, her prominent arms and shoulders exposed by the generous cut of her clothing . Her white shirt revealed her midriff and, along with it, her muscular abdomen, the angle of the sun making the shadows stand out against her warm umber skin. It suited her, this natural light – the orange undertones of her complexion illuminated by streams of pale yellow sunshine. Crops grew in rows behind her, a wash of green peppered with flecks of red and royal purple, and it seemed like she’d set up some sprinklers to help make the watering easier.

He could only observe her for a moment though, for as soon as Jas saw her, she shrieked in delight and dashed forward with her arms spread out like a tiny pink airplane.

“Bear!”

She launched herself at the farmer, who dropped her hoe and reached out, catching her underneath her armpits and lifting her up. Jas’ giggle carried over the field, and the farmer swung her, a merry twirl that ended with Bear placing a light, affectionate kiss on top of the girl’s forehead before setting her down.

She might have even been smiling, until Jas pointed directly at Shane and said, “You don’t mind that I brought my uncle along, do you?”

Bear looked up, straight at him, and he didn’t need to see the details of her expression to know what she was thinking. He could tell just by the posture, the way she stiffened so unnaturally and looked back down at Jas. He could hear it in her voice, how she hesitated to speak for a flat few seconds before hesitantly managing a “…Well…”

He’d seen that kind of reaction time and time again, and he approached the pair, hands in his pockets and his typical gloomy glower darkening his features. “Didn’t realize Jas hadn’t told you beforehand. I can go; seems like she’s been here a bunch, and Marnie trusts you to watch her.”

“Ah, but…”

Bear wore an expression rather like that of a deer being caught in the high-beams of a massive truck. Jas, being a kid and therefore not entirely sensitive to emotional complexity, didn’t pick up on this. “Don’t worry, he won’t do anything to trouble the farm spirits. Promise! I’ll keep a good eye on him.”

 _Farm spirits?_ Fuck, this was a disaster. He _knew_ he should have been more of an asshole and just said _no!_

“Seriously, don’t let me spoil the mood. Jas, play nice, okay?”

“But – but _Shane…!”_

He was just about to extricate himself from this horrible situation when the farmer stopped him with a simple, short command.

“Wait.”

Shane turned, eyebrows pushed up so they touched the edge of his disheveled flop of hair. She had a hand extended towards him, which she curled up awkwardly and let rest at her side once he was facing her. Bear looked away again, though at least this time it was in his general vicinity, her nose turned down so she was looking at his shoes.

“You’re already here. How about a… tour?”

She stumbled over the last word like it was the name of an unexpected party guest, but there was still some force to the sentence. Combined with Jas’ look – which he’d been trying so hard to ignore – he could only give up and nod his assent.

“If you want to, I guess.”

Look at the good side, Shane told himself. That would give a specific start and end period of their interaction, making it easier to leave gracefully without hurting Jas.

Perfect.

“After that, can we go to the shrine? I brought shells from the beach this time! Vincent and I found all the best ones together.”

As if to prove her dedication, Jas turned opened her small, plush pink purse (the one with the felted unicorn on it) and showed the pair a conch swirled with a glistening rainbow sheen and a large, pearly-white clam that had been polished clean by the water. “I thought they might like to see something from outside their home.”

Shane refrained from asking.

“That’s kind of you,” Bear said to Jas, then leaned down to the ground and picked up her hoe. Slinging it over her shoulder, she tilted her head towards the cobble-stone path that cut through the swaths of greenry and the freshly-tilled farmland. “I’ll show you where the flowers are growing. They’re not in bloom, but the stems are coming up.”

“Okay!”

As Shane trudged along behind them, he felt like the very epitome of a ‘third wheel’. Though Bear had ostensibly offered to show him around, she didn’t ever really specifically address him, instead looking at Jas while making her comments to the group. Bear gestured to each plant they passed, stating what she was growing, how they were coming along, and a surprisingly amount of miscellaneous trivia which Jas hungrily devoured. It was a bit overwhelming, to be honest, and it was odd to not even be talked at, but talked… _around._ Not that he could blame her, really, but…

It was awkward.

Still, he couldn’t deny that the farm was beautiful. Marnie had been right when she’d said Bear had done a lot with the place. Trellises of grapes lined one side of the path, their big, flat leaves exposed to the sun, and on the other were cranberries and patches of what Shane, even in his ignorance, could recognize as pumpkins. Beyond, on the other side of the pond, Shane could see animals grazing behind a fence – a number of cows and, from a clucking he could faintly perceive, chickens. The barn, painted a bright, cherry red, looked to be expertly maintained – likely Robin’s work, and the coop was the same. The air, a bit chilly from the changing season, had a fresh, sprightly clearness to it that felt... good to be in.

It was funny, it wasn’t like the oxygen over here was any different than by Joja, but he still felt like he could breathe easier on the farmer’s land.

Bear turned left at her house, a modestly sized building that could probably use a fresh coat of paint. He barely noticed that, though, given the sheer amount of plant life dominating the area around the building. Vines grew on the fence and up the muted brown siding, bursting with trumpet-like blue and purple flowers. An assortment of blossoms poked out of big barrels just before the porch’s foundation, and on the windowsill, clumps marigolds and pretty, pale-blue irises were interspersed between pointy-leafed greenery that hung down the sides of the planters. More flowers hung from baskets suspended on the porch, and even the roof had ivy crawling across the slate slats forming the upper portion of the house. It was honestly breathtaking – Shane had never seen anything like it.

It looked like a cottage from a fairy-tale, and instead of following the two girls down the path, he stopped in front of the stairs and stared in slack-jawed amazement.

“…You okay?”

With a jolt, Shane realized the farmer had noticed this, half her body turned so she could look over her shoulder at him.

_At him._

She was looking _at him._

 _Yoba, it’s like she’s a bodybuilder,_ Shane couldn’t help but think as he swallowed. “Uhh – yeah, sorry. I just, uh…”

No good excuse came to mind, but luckily, he didn’t need one.

“I know, ‘s a bit much. But I like them, flowers. The more there are around… the better things are, I think.”

Shane had never thought one way or the other about the topic, but he had to admit – part of him wanted to live in a house like that. At the very least, because it’d mean he _had_ a house, along with enough drive to spend on things as petty as aesthetic concerns, and Jas would love it, really, no wonder she came here so often…

“…Do you like them, too?”

She looked away then, the farmer, but she was still talking to him. Jas had gone on ahead a bit, clearly showing that she didn’t need a tour as she gravitated towards the fenced in animals and the stabled horse over near the barn.

“They’re… uh, okay. I mean - I’m not really used to them. I grew up in the city, so… concrete jungle, I guess. And my parents weren’t really the gardening type.”          

He’d expected her to be satisfied with that answer, to turn and walk away – just as she’d done during that morning with Marnie. But she stayed there, and he saw her drum her fingers against the wooden base of the hoe, her gaze sort of cast aside, but not in a way that implied she was ignoring him. More like… she was taking a moment to think, observing the glimmering water in the pond before redirecting her attention back to him. Instead of speaking, though, she reached out to one of her planters, pinching her thumb and forefinger on the stem of some large, bright-red flower with circles of small, pointed petals built up in layers. She snapped it a little ways down the stem, twirling it in a manner reminiscent of a pinwheel before stepping close to Shane – too close, _Yoba she was tall –_ and slipping it behind his ear.

He could feel it, the tips of her fingers grazing the edge of his jaw in an unintentional wisp of contact. He could feel it, his heart pounding in his throat, and the surprisingly substantial weight of the flower pressed up against his temple. _What the hell?_ He thought, voice not working as he looked up at her. What the hell – she wasn’t really looking _at_ him, just sort of in the area by his shoulder, but this still felt so weirdly intimate, making him feel hot and embarrassed and _Yoba she was so muscular what the hell._

What the hell.

He didn’t say anything – _couldn’t –_ and though only a few heartbeats passed before she spoke, it felt like he’d been trapped there for eternity.

“It’s never too late,” she said softly, with eyes that were like the faint warmth from a cooling hearth.

Perhaps, had the moment gone on longer, Shane would have managed to reply. Probably something nasty, knowing him, or something that made him look like an idiot, but he never got the chance, because an excited squeal from elsewhere on the property caused Bear to turn on her heel and look away.

“Are these the fairy roses?!”

“Ah – probably, but be careful! The bee hives are near there; don’t get stung!”

Bear, now completely distracted, strode off towards wherever Jas had disappeared to. For her, it must have been such a minor thing, but to Shane? His heart was still hammering in his chest for a reason he couldn’t even begin to discern. She’d looked so serious. So _intense._ For a moment, his entire world had been swallowed up by her. With a nervous shakiness, he raised his hand to touch her bizarre gift to him. It felt… a little strange to the touch, all of those petals giving it an unusual texture, but something about it felt very soft. Very _rich._ Like – it was the kind of thing royalty would own.

It was stupid, he knew. _Dumb._ But, he gave that beautiful house overcome with flowers one more final look before he hurried after the strange, strange farmer and whatever nonsense his goddaughter had gotten up to now.


	4. A Story of Alcohol, Which is Basically Just Shane Summarized, Isn’t It?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> assdihkjh sorry this is a bit late in the day i've been occupied with flying back home!

_What am I feeling right now?_ Shane asked himself as he stared at the faded, withered flower, holding it up at arm’s length while white lantern light illuminated its petals. _Misery? Jealousy? Resentment?_

_Hate?_

It inspired something in him – that much had become clear by the third day he’d kept it, leaving it on his bedside table to dry devoid of water. But still, even after a week, he couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was. Without a doubt, it was painful; was that because it represented a crisp autumn Saturday that he hadn’t spent in his usual spot in the saloon… and how the Sunday after, he’d been right back there again and drinking his weekend away? Did it serve as a warning, a reminder of why it was necessary to sequester himself from people in the first place, because he kept disappointing everyone and being disappointed in return?

Or – or was this awful feeling _anger,_ because he detested the farmer, bore her such a bitter resentment for having everything _that he wanted but couldn’t force himself to achieve?_

With a miserable sigh, Shane let his hand flop down and, lying there on the dock with the dry, dead flower cupped in his hand, he closed his eyes and thought.

It had been fine for a while after that, after that farmer had given him her odd gift in a bizarre show of… what, exactly? Kindness? Pity? Some misplaced desire to connect with him? A flight of whimsy – no, that didn’t really seem right for her, nothing about her was carefree, and her fanciful eccentricity was calculated and restrained. But still, he didn’t quite understand what had motivated her to pluck the flower from her gardens and give it to him before saying that odd, sincere, damnably stupid sentence.

_It’s never too late._

They’d seen the fairy roses, and Jas had insisted on getting close, climbing on her hands and knees to watch them grow. She didn’t touch their delicate leaves, frayed at the edges like a torn dress, nor did she reach out for the bulbous green shapes that would eventually burst into flowers. But she was still fascinated, and Shane had kept himself from chiding her on how messy she was getting. It’d be Marnie’s problem in the end. He didn’t really care about the laundry.

(When Jas had gotten back up, she’d complimented the flower in his hair with a bright smile and asked Bear what kind it was. It was then he learned its name – a _dahlia.)_

After that had been the shrine. It was an odd little venture, being taken through an overgrown path through the woods and trampling through the wild bushes. Bear had helped them – holding tree limbs out of their eyes and stomping on the ground ahead of them to push some of the grass down in to a more manageable level – but it was still a trek, with twigs stinging at his face and foliage getting in his eyes.

(Shane had raised a hand to protect the flower in his hair more than once. For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to him to take it out, and something even stranger had forced him to keep it safe.)

He’d complained, admittedly, and Jas had told him to shush – Bear hadn’t cleared the path because the spirits _liked_ it that way.

The shrine was set into the side of a large mound, a thing made of chiseled stone and polished marble. Moss grew across the base, and the small, cleared glade was surrounded by a thick tree line that kept the area in perpetual shadow. He could see a glimmer of the sky, hints of blue peeking through the leaves, but otherwise it was dim, and something about it felt almost… eerie.

It smelled cool, with an earthen sort of must that almost made him believe he’d traveled to another world. It felt like an old place, and from how worn the lettering on the shrine was – and from the fact that he didn’t recognize the script at all – he could only figure that it truly was ancient.

Jas immediately seemed a bit more demure in its presence, genuinely _reverent,_ which felt so impossibly weird to him. Like, okay – he didn’t believe in Yoba, but that didn’t mean that he was just totally comfortable with his goddaughter following some weird farmer out into the woods to worship forest gods or whatever. She was an impressionable kid! What was Bear trying to do, _convert_ her?

It made him strangely bitter, and he stood back and watched, crossing his arms with a perplexed, judgmental squint. If they noticed, though, it didn’t let them affect their fun.

And –

And they did _have fun._

Both girls seemed to entirely forget Shane was there, which should have suited him just fine because he didn’t really want to _be there –_ but it didn’t, because it just proved how damn different he was from either of them. How much he didn’t _belong_ in their odd, pretty word.

With a quiet, modest sincerity, Jas unloaded the shells from her purse, placing them on the weathered stone before kneeling on the grass before it. Beside her, Bear took a similar position, offering a small basket of crops she’d gathered from the storehouse right before their journey to the shrine. Honey, some sort of white vegetable he didn’t know the name of, mounds of berries, some potatoes – it looked fresh and inviting and - …what, she was going to leave it for some made up forest god to give her _luck_ or whatever?

Hah! Was that why his life had turned out so shitty? Because he hadn’t prayed enough to weird things in the woods?

Shane had almost snorted, but he’d had enough self-control to refrain.

They’d both said words – some sort of prayer, though Shane, sprawled out on the docks, couldn’t recall them now. He could remember bits and pieces of them, like he could just grasp the very edges of it, but it was like trying to touch a reflection. As soon as his fingers made contact with it, those old words scattered, and they were lost to the hazy mist.

Not that it mattered.

It was dumb bullshit anyway.

_So why did it bring them such joy, huh?_

After their prayer, Jas had smiled and thanked the spirits for making Bear’s crops grow and Marnie’s animals happy. After their offering, she’d turned to the farmer, and asked her to tell her a story. And it was a silly thing, the kind of thing he’d hear from his grandmother who’d then be scolded by his parents for filling his head with nonsense, but if it was really that dumb, _then why did Jas look so happy as she gave presents to Juminos or whatever? **And why couldn’t he do that too?**_

Shane did remember, in his heart of hearts, that Jas was a young, traumatized girl who was certainly looking for any way possible to escape what she’d been put through. Her parents, her grandfather, her life in the city – of course she’d be drawn to a fanciful game like this, and perhaps he was putting the farmer through unduely cruel judgement. He didn’t know her heart, didn’t know her motivations, and it was unfair to slander her, even in his own head, as some kind of bizarre nature worshipping hippie who was trying to lead his goddaughter down the path of tie-die shirts, peace-sign adorned vans, and smoking strange substances around a campfire while singing _kumbaya._ And – hell, even if she _was,_ he already knew one wacko crystal worshiper and she wasn’t that bad. Weird, but Emily had a good heart.

But even though he knew all that, he still couldn’t help that awful resentment. He still couldn’t stand seeing someone that should be _his_ to raise be taught these weird things that he thought were idiotic. He still couldn’t help but wishing that he wasn’t such a fuck-up that it was necessary for the farmer to play with Jas, and _he wished that he hadn’t already become so irrelevant that they were completely ignoring him in the first place._

Why was being in a beautiful place enough to turn his heart into that of an awful monster? _Was Shane really that broken of a human being?_

Yet it wouldn’t go away. It wouldn’t leave him be. It rotted inside him and once more, he raised the dahlia up, dry petals framed against the dark sheet of the sky, before crushing the flower in his palm. It collapsed with a crunch and fragments of it slipped between his fingers like grains of sand.

He watched it, then dumped the remains in the water and tipped the bottle of whiskey straight into his mouth. All he could do was drink, and try to forget these ugly feelings. All he could do was drink, and try to wash away the bitterness with a burning amber that crawled its way down his throat and settled in his stomach, making his skin buzz and the world shift around him. Shane set the bottle down, closed his eyes…  and everything swam, even his own heart. Part of him felt like he’d never get up again. Part of him never wanted to.

It’s never too late? Hah! Aha! It’d been too late for him since the day he was _born._

It was then, that somewhere, a twig snapped, and in the dark, a rough, flat voice spoke out in surprise. “Sh- _Shane?_ ”

The man in question couldn’t help but let out an ugly, gurgling laugh when he heard it.

How funny. How deplorably funny, he thought to himself, not even bothering to open his eyes. Had, once again, the farmer come to him in an alcohol fueled dream? Had she come to execute him for his sins and drag him to hell, just like his mother told him would happen time and time again? Had his time finally come, and would he finally be taken to task for this ugliness festering inside of him?

With a thud, thud, thud, she approached, and he could hear the creak of wood on the docks.

Surprisingly, Shane did not die.

He felt a hand on his wrist first, a surprisingly delicate thumb placed right beneath his palm and checking his pulse. Next, he felt fingers on his mouth, probably feeling for his breath, and – after having found it – his stupid illusion forced her arm underneath his back and heaved him up into what felt like her lap.

“Hey,” the farmer said, smacking his face lightly. _“Wake up.”_

 _I am awake,_ Shane tried to say, but what came out was an unintelligible slur. Nothing felt real, his consciousness kept melting as his body was taken apart and put together again. Please, he wanted to sleep. Just let him sleep, or kill him quickly. His body felt so hot! Don’t make him _talk._

The farmer patted his face again, a bit harder this time, and Shane finally forced himself to open his eyes just to make it stop. Immediately, he regretted it, because he was immediately dropped into a pit of thrumming nausea.

 _Oh shit,_ he wanted to say, but knew if he opened his mouth, the worst would happen. _Put me down._

“Have you taken anything?” the farmer said, her face illuminated by the electric lantern that he’d brought out with him to the docks. That’s probably how she’d noticed him, honestly – otherwise, he would have just been a shadowed lump in the dark. “Shane, this is important. _Have you just been drinking?”_

Everything happened in slow motion. That dizziness, that overwhelming sickness, that churning pounding in his head and his gut – they all just faded, burying into his stomach and then coming up in an uncontrollable retch that he tried – _Yoba, he tried so hard –_ to direct away from Bear. He didn’t care where; on the docks, into the lake, fuck, into the sky would have been better than _directly on her._

But he failed, like so many other things in his life, and Bear’s flannel shirt was soaked in a spray of his own vomit.

“Oh fuck,” Shane blubbered, words hoarse and raspy before everything he’d been feeling, every self-inflicted wound and miserable, self-pitying bite came out in a detestable wail. “Oh fuck, I’m so fucking sorry, holy shit, I was, was trying to warn you, oh shit, oh shit oh shit oh _shit…”_

Tears streamed down his face in thick, ugly globules, and he could still _taste_ it, his own damn sick, and he wanted to wash his face off and she was _covered_ in it, oh fuck, this was it. This was the worst timeline. This was literally the worst case scenario, he needed to immediately end his own existence for the good of all mankind.

 **He’d just thrown up on a stranger,** and he kept apologizing, and she was just _sitting there,_ holding him upright with both of her hands on his shoulders but staring absently at somewhere around his chest. Her body was totally, completely stiff, like she couldn’t quite process it, couldn’t quite handle what had happened. He was still sobbing, though his babbling stopped when that feeling coiled in him again. This time, at least, he had the decency to throw up over the side of the docks instead of on her.

He coughed a few times after it had come up, hot and sticky, and he was half bent over, his fingers clenched into fists and his head over the water. He could still feel bits of the flower digging into his skin, sharpened by dryness, and he could also feel one of Bear’s hands on his arms, probably to keep him from tipping over and falling in. Which was a danger, admittedly, nothing felt real, everything kept sliding and slipping and he was _still crying._

Dully, Shane realized that she had started to speak to him.

“’S okay. Just get it out. I’ve got you, I’ve got you… Here – stay still.”

Shane felt something soft at his mouth. He managed to look down at it in the sharp, white light, and saw that she, with her other hand, she was gently wiping his face with a small cloth.

Groaning, he spat some of the awful-tasting saliva into the water, and she wiped his face again.

Was this what being a toddler was like? It certainly felt like it.

“I’m so, so sorry, shit, I’m such a fuck up, you shoulda just left me…”

“If I’d left you,” Bear said calmly, and he could almost imagine that she didn’t want to throttle him. “You would have probably passed out and choked to death.”

 _“Yeah,”_ Shane sobbed out, and Bear went still for a moment. _“Yeah, like I deserve.”_

There was a quiet, careful pause from her, then a gentle, “What?” and well, guess it was just that kind of night, he supposed. He couldn’t really stop himself from metaphorically vomiting on her as well. _Feelings_ vomit.

“I deserve it. _I deserve this._ Why can’t I be decent for, like, _two seconds?_ Why can’t I be anything but this Yoba-forsaken mess? Why can’t I – why can’t I… why can’t I _do something with myself?_ I’ve forgotten what things _being good_ is like! How the hell could I ever be a good thing for Jas? How the hell could I ever be a good thing for anyone? Everything I touch - _I make it worse!_ Why do I even get up in the morning? Why…”

Fat tears splashed on the docks, dappling them with dark smudges like rain. “Why am I even alive? _Why was I even born? Please, tell me!_ I feel like I'm trapped in this pit, and nothing I do will ever… _”_

Suddenly – though not too sudden, because jostling him too much was clearly a dangerous maneuver, he felt himself being pulled into Bear’s lap.

It was just the edge of it – just his cheek on her thigh, carefully maneuvered so he wouldn’t come into contact with her defiled shirt. He could smell it, kinda, which was pretty unpleasant, but it was just a small puzzle piece at the edge of this situation, just one thing to focus on.

Mostly, he felt the warmth of her hand on his hair, he felt the rugged texture of her jeans on his cheek. Mostly, he felt her thumb wiping away his tears, and he curled up, just crying now, with his knees at his chest as if to shield his broken heart from any more misery. It didn’t help, because those thorns that kept piercing him were growing inside his own body – but somehow, the feeling of the farmer running her fingers through his disheveled hair made it easier to just _cry._

Purging oneself was never easy, but she didn’t shove him off like he deserved. She just kept him there, not saying anything, and bore witness to his suffering. Though she was a stranger, he used her like he’d known her his entire life… and later, he’d feel terrible about it, but for now?

All he could do was let everything go.

It took him a long time to quiet, though perhaps that was just the natural distortion of time due to too much alcohol. Still – for him, in his perspective, his tears had felt endless, and he could feel a noticeable wetness on the fabric of her thigh when he finally came back to reality. Seeming to sense that the force of his meltdown had abated somewhat, Bear once again dabbed at his face with her handkerchief, and he reached up to take it and blow his nose.

“Ugh…” he groaned, and then rolled on his back so he could look up at her.

 

In a sudden flash, he realized that Bear was not wearing a shirt.

“How’re you feeling?” she asked, a note of care entering her voice, reminiscent of the way she spoke about her animals when she’d been talking to Marnie. Her eyes, too – they were gentle, like they’d been when she was looking at flowers, and he felt his heart pulsing in his throat, a steady _thump, thump, thump_ as she looked down at him. She didn’t smile – had he ever seen her smile? – and she looked so, so tired, the artificial light lingering beneath her shadowed eyes and in sharp, dramatic cuts across her brow. For a moment, he wondered why she was out here so late, wandering the wilderness outside the enclosure of her farm.

Mostly, though, he was stunned by her bare chest.

It wasn’t – it wasn’t _attraction,_ he told himself, this would be a weird as hell situation to experience something like that, it was just – it was just –

He didn’t particularly know how to process it. Like his mind kept getting stuck on her pectorals and her deltoids and her biceps and all sorts of things that he only knew the names of because he’d done weight training back when he was into gridball, which made him _only more admiring of her incredible form._ Like, this wasn’t attraction – it _definitely_ wasn’t attraction – but holy hell, how many push-ups could she do? What would it have been like, seeing her _play?_ Why had no one scouted her? Look at her! She could _crush_ him! Even in his prime, she could have crushed him!

It absolutely, _certainly_ wasn’t attraction, but she wasn’t even wearing a bra, and Yoba-damn-him, he couldn’t look away.

“…Shane?” she prompted, squinting at him like she was a bit worried she’d have to smack him into consciousness again. Distantly, he realized he should probably stop staring.

He didn’t.

“Your shirt is gone.”

“Yes,” she said patiently, raising one hand to rub at her forehead. “You puked on it. You’re not in a position to be sexist about this.”

“I. What.”

“You wouldn’t have mentioned it if I was a man.”

“I mean,” Shane struggled, but alcohol made him unable to resist going down this conversational avenue. _“You’re not wearing a bra.”_

“Shane, look at me. Do you honestly think I need one?”

 _“No,”_ he said, voice going a little higher than it honestly ought to have. _It was looking at her that was the_ _problem!_ “But - ”

“But,” Bear interrupted, and that gentleness from before was gone. “It doesn’t matter. You probably won’t remember this in the morning, anyway. Have you just been drinking, or did you take something else?”

“I,” Shane said, mostly as a way to fill space, then sniffled more and blew his nose. He felt empty now; like he’d been drained of the infected pus that had been boiling in his chest before, and now he just felt tired and overwhelmed. “What do you mean?”

“Drugs.” She looked around, then picked up his lantern, using it to look among the scattered cans and the liquor he’d brought. “Don’t see anything, but I need to know what to tell Harvey.”

“What… do you mean?”

She turned her flat gaze to him again, frowning now. “If you can walk now, I’m taking you to Doctor Harvey.”

“I don’t – I don’t want to go!”

 _“You’re going,”_ Bear said with an ironclad severity, and it was a considerable mood whiplash from the way she had gently stroked his hair before. “Even if I have haul you over my shoulder to do it, you’re going.”

Shane gaped. Swallowed. Tried not to look at her chest, failed, and said – “You, uh. Sound like you’ve done this before.”

“I have.”

He thought for a moment, about the calm, patient way she’d handled him crying, him puking on her, and him being just the most disgusting mess on the planet. She hadn’t yelled. As far as he could tell, she hadn’t even _shuddered._

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, closing his eyes. It was hard to hold onto one thought for very long, but that was the thing he felt most of all in this moment. “So sorry that you had to put up with me.”

“Eh. Could be worse.” She paused, and nudged her shoulder lightly into his knee. “Keep your eyes open. If you’re ready to pass out, you’re ready to go to the doctor.”

“But…”

“No buts,” she said, and then he felt her hands under his armpits. It was a bit rough, being dragged up – though it could have been rougher, and he appreciated that she hadn’t just manhandled him and thrown him over her shoulder. One of her arms was wrapped around her back, and she leaned him against him so his cheek was against her bare skin. _She’s not wearing a shirt_ he thought dully as he felt her warm skin in the warm autumn night. But, she’d made it clear how she felt about him bringing it up, so he said nothing and tried to take a step when she did.

It was wobbly. Uncertain. She held him tighter to keep him from falling, and Shane’s breath caught in his throat.

Spent, empty, tired, yet with a weird hum in his blood, he asked her, “Why are you doing this…?”

There was silence from her. They took another step, their combined weight causing the dock to creak. Then, “You need it.”

He hated that. He hated that he _needed_ it. And most of all –

“Fuck, why does that matter? ‘M never around for those who need me.”

 _Why was I born?_ Shane asked himself again, staring at the ground as they slowly made their way down the path. _The things I should do, I run away from._

“…Shane.”

She stopped, and he naturally did to, and as he looked up at her, tall and steady and face cast in shadow, he wished he hadn’t destroyed the flower she’d given him a week ago.

“Bring Jas over this weekend. The fairy roses will be in bloom. It can be…”

She trailed off, and then with a shrug, she looked away, at something hazy off in the distance. “A princess party. She’d like that a lot.”

Shane wasn’t sure what he was feeling right now, leaning against the farmer and absorbed by her warmth. _What am I feeling right now?_ He asked himself, and for the life of him, he didn’t know the answer. But -

Carefully, in his drunken stupor, he said, “…Okay.”

And with a nod, Bear resumed helping him along, and neither of them spoke again until they reached doctor Harvey’s clinic.


	5. A Story of a Semi-Expected Guest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And here it becomes clear that I am going to take the Stardew Valley lore and run with it in whatever direction pleases me.

Bear woke up at approximately six a.m, and after staring at the ceiling for a less-approximate minute, she hauled herself up and began her morning routine.

Wash face. Brush teeth. Ignore the comb on the edge of the porcelain basin; it wasn’t like she kept mirrors around anyway. Eye the shower, decide against a shower, her hair was still damp from last night’s two a.m. shower so another one was probably unnecessary. Yawn, stretch, get changed.

There wasn’t much to choose from. Mostly flannel, a few crop-tops, some overalls, and an assortment of graphic print t-shirts her little brother had gotten her because they were _artsy_ but she never wore because she might get dirt on them. Or moss. Or blood.

Or vomit, apparently.

In the privacy of her home, Bear winced, decided to remain in her pajamas for now, and then went into the living room.

She picked the remote up off the shelf near the door, sliding it out of its shaded spot under the leaves of her rabbit fern. Without looking, she brought the television to life with a casual press of a button, and then proceeded to ignore the pictures flickering across the screen. It was an old thing, dated by its boxy exterior and the VCR player underneath it, but it didn’t trouble Bear any. Just meant more space to put pots.

One of the spots in her floor creaked. She should fix that. Or - no. She should pay Robin to do it. The woman probably needed all the work she could get.

A sigh. Bear walked to the kitchen.

She made coffee. She contemplated making breakfast. She didn’t really want to, but the part of her that spoke in her mother’s voice said that eating was important. After an exhausted rub of her face, Bear opened the fridge, pulled out a carton of eggs, a custard-cup of butter, and some milk, and went to get a bowl from the cupboard over the sink. The fortune teller’s voice droned on in the background.

Her luck would be bad today. Typical.

Carefully, using a knife to scrape off the excess, she portioned out the flour and sugar, and with her set of little measuring spoons, she added in a dollop of salt and baking powder. Mix. In a smaller bowl, she cracked the eggs, their yellow yolks shining against the white frosted ceramic. The butter melted in a small saucepan, the griddle preheated on the next burner over, and it was just as she was portioning out the milk that she heard a knock at the door.

She paused. Looked over. Stared for a moment, and stomped on the feeling of dread pooling up in her stomach.

It was like trying to plug a breach in a dam with one’s finger. Was it Harvey? Was it Marnie? Was it Shane himself? She didn’t know which would be worse; it all depended on how selfish she was feeling today. There was another knock, and she lumbered over to open the door, trying very, very hard not to think too much.

Staring up at her, framed by a white, tangled beard and prominent, fluffy eyebrows, was Linus.

“Sorry,” he said, his smile long and his eyes creased with concern. “This isn’t too early, is it? I just wanted to come by before you got too busy on the farm.”

“‘S fine,” Bear said, noticing the basket of blackberries supported by the crook of his elbow. They were beautiful; a generous mound of fat, plump fruits set against a hand-woven frame of wicker. As they glistened in the early morning light, her mouth instinctively watered. While she wasn’t much of a glutton, even Bear had her vices, and one of them was a good berry.

Without asking, she picked one off the top, put it in her mouth, and stepped aside to beckon Linus in. He laughed and walked through the doorway.

She liked it when he laughed.

“Your house is looking as lovely as ever,” he commented as he entered, glancing around at the shelving and the motley of ceramic holders inhabiting every nook and conceivable cranny. A small fig tree (whose fruit would later be offered to the spirits), mistletoe above the doorway (to bless the home as a place of peace), violets (to burn for harmony), lavender and chamomile (to infuse in honey), numerous ferns (love and loyalty) and catnip (for the cat) – these were only some of the manifold floral residents residing in her home. Perhaps it would be fair to say that Bear lived in an arboretum rather than a house; it would certainly convey her circumstances better.

“Mm,” she grunted in reply, and then gestured to the small, hand-made wooden table in the space to the left of the door. Three rough-shod chairs surrounded it, forming the proverbial round table of their general arrangement. Linus set the bowl down as Bear shuffled off into the kitchen, adding another spoonful of butter to the saucepan before opening one of her cupboards and filling her arms full of mason jars.

“That’s… a lot,” Linus commented as she wandered back over to him and began setting them down.

“You brought me a lot. These are preserves,” she indicated the bold, capital _P_ scribbled on metal lid. “This is jam, this is jelly, and this is fruit butter. I used a sieve to get the seeds out of the berries, so it’s actually... kind of buttery. And,” she held up one finger for emphasis before pulling open her pantry. “I also had some extra time, so I made a batch of fruit-bread too.”

A pause.

“Had some troubles sleeping lately, huh?” asked Linus, and Bear shrugged in return.

She set down the tin beside the bright, clear jars. The jelly was transparent, like a royal purple jewel illuminated by an inner red fire, while the preserves were thick, chunky, and a deep, dark color like stained wood. The bread, a warm, mild brown, was crusted with cinnamon and walnuts, and after she was done stacking her gifts up in front of the mountain man, she picked up his basket and took it into the depths of her kitchen, where she emptied it out in a bowl she kept by the sink.

Ah - the butter had melted. She turned the burner off, added another cup of flour and another portion of eggs and milk into the wet mix, and then combined them all into a greater whole.

“Do you think blackberries would taste good in pancakes?” Bear asked conversationally, and Linus figured at that point he should sit down.

“I’m not sure. I’ve never tried.”

“Well, experimentation is…” she trailed off, folding the batter in on itself with a spatula and mixing it until it was smooth. “I don’t know. I don’t know what they say about experimentation. But it’ll probably be fine.”

Linus laughed again, a deep sound from his belly, before he began to pick each of the jars up and examine them in turn. “Well, they’re delightful with blueberries, so I can’t imagine blackberries would be too different.”

“Blueberries are smaller, though. Squishier. I’m a bit worried that blackberries will stick out of the batter and make them look ugly.”

“Well, food doesn’t have to be pretty to taste good.”

“True,” Bear said, thinking back to some of the abhorrent-yet-oddly-compelling things her mom had tried to craft in the kitchen. Those peanut-butter crisps had looked like chips of dirty ice chiseled off of the side of the car, but damn, they’d been pretty good. “It’s worth a try, at least.”

For a time, there was silence – a warm sort of comfortable silence, filled with the sound of running water and the subtle sizzle of batter being ladled onto a skillet. Bear didn’t hum – she wasn’t that sort of person – but it was the sort of atmosphere suited for humming, and when she glanced over at the man in her kitchen, she felt happiness at seeing him relaxed there, looking over the potted gerberas on the table with a faint smile on his face.

It was a common sight, him stroking his leaf-and-twig speckled beard as he waited for her to finish up whatever she was cooking up in the kitchen so they could sit and have a chat. In fact, it’d be fair to say that _Bear cooking_ automatically translated to _I want to talk,_ because otherwise, she would have shooed him out with her typical hamfisted inelegance.

Which he never seemed to mind, bless his soul. If there was one thing about a druid, it was that they knew when to let things simply _be_ when it was necessary. But – he was here, he was sitting and waiting, and as she grabbed two dry plates from her dish-rack, she thought about how she wanted to word what she wanted to ask.

It was easier since it was just him, rather than having to deal with the judgement of Rasmodius, but that still didn’t mean it _wasn’t hard._

She watched the batter bubble in the little circular disks she’d portioned out, lumps of fruit poking out from the milky-white surface, before taking her plastic spatula and flipping them, one-two. She’d been right in thinking the blackberries would be a little large, so she flattened them with the utensil’s back, making the pancakes a little more manageable.

Juice spilled out over the browned surface, and she waited about a minute before transferring them to the other plate.

“Do you want anything to drink? Coffee, juice, milk, tea, uh…” she trailed off, squinting absently at the wallpaper. “…Water?”

“Do you still have any more of that spice-berry juice? Or is it all gone?”

“A little bit.” Bear scooped another ladleful of batter, dipping out three more circles before she went to the fridge, cracking it open and picking out a glass bottle. There wasn’t much left of the golden liquid – just about a glass full, if she put ice in it. “Should be enough.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to take the last of it! Just water would be fine.”

“Someone should drink it before it ferments. Might as well be you.”

She checked the pan. Not bubbling yet. She filled one glass full of her Still-Unnamed Summer Mix Special, then other with coffee fresh from the pot, and brought both to the table along with Linus’ now-empty basket tucked under her arm.

“You can just bring the glass jars back to me when you’re done with everything; I’ll recycle them. Do you like zucchinis? I’ll have zucchini bread for you tomorrow if you do.”

“I’d hate to trouble you,” said a man who clearly liked his current prospects very much but didn’t want to seem too grotesquely eager about it. Bear let out a little cluck of a sound, shaking her head and going back to the stove.

“I planted too many this summer. You’d be doing me a favor.”

“Still, I should give you something in return. Some grapes, perhaps? I know you’re already growing some, but the wild varieties have an entirely different flavor.”

“No. For free. You don’t quite understand what I mean when I said I planted too much zucchini. They’re massive. They’re numerous. They kept producing through the entire season, and only just now has autumn defeated the great beast and closed the pocket to the zucchini realm.”

Linus’ eyebrows went up at that, and a note of incredulity entered his voice. “You’re making it sound like a bad thing. Isn’t a large harvest good for you?”

“To an extent. There’s only so much zucchini an entire town can consume. I think if I show up at Pierre’s store with another twenty pound bag, he’ll get a shotgun and murder me.” Not once did Bear’s voice deviate from its normal flat, predictable cadence, like she was discussing a grave matter of national security.

She went back to her pancakes.

“I – that seems like an exaggeration.”

“You weren’t here for the great zucchini crisis of nineteen-seventy four. My mom told me about it. Jeremiah wrote about it. And I, the fool, did not listen. Mourn me when I am gone, Linus, for the arrogance of thinking that I, a simple farmer, could play god. _Zucchini_ god.”

At this, Linus burst out laughing, because there was only so much he could take of Bear being an impenetrable straight-man before he cracked. “Okay, okay, I’ll take some zucchini bread, if it saves you that much trouble.”

“It would, thank you.”

Bear flipped another set of pancakes, and then bit her lip, preparing to change conversational gears as she worked up the courage to speak her mind.

“Linus… I have a question for you.”

“Mm?” He said, seeming prepared for this. He rested his arm on the back of the chair, turning half of his hide clad body so he could look at her properly. She glanced at him, a brief spot of contemplation from the corner of her eye before finishing up her own plate and turning off the burner. From the windowsill, she picked a few sprigs of mint off of the row of spices she had growing there, garnished the top, and then brought both dishes over.

“Do you know a man called Shane? Er – oh. And do you want some syrup? It’s fresh.”

“Syrup would be lovely,” Linus said, taking the dish she offered him with a warm smile. “And I know _of_ him, though I can’t really say I know him. Why, exactly? Did something happen?”

Clink. She set her breakfast down at her usual spot, went to the cupboard, and fetched the syrup. Bear liked setting up meals, liked this portion of entertaining guests. Even if Linus had been a complete stranger, she still would _enjoy_ the process of making him food, because it was a ritualized, routine procedure. Do one thing, then the next thing, then the next, with no need for terrifying deviations or spur-of-the-moment creativity. A recipe was a recipe because she could follow it to the letter and get roughly the same result every time. It was calming, it was relaxing, and in the end, she’d have fed someone, taken care of them, and done something worthwhile with herself. That was her method of making sure people were alright.

But –

With Shane - ….

“He’s… having some problems,” she said mildly, uncorking the yellow bottle and placing it on Jeremiah’s old table. “And as the Warden, I really should do something.”

Linus’ expression changed, becoming more serious, which quite frankly, looked completely ridiculous considering he was drizzling syrup over his pancakes.

“What sort of problems?”

“Not – _our_ kind of problems,” she quickly assured him as she sat down. It was a silly contrast, but this was how they did their work, so Bear was used to it, to these meetings over breakfast in a flower-drenched room while they spoke of the fate of the town. “Normal people problems. Well, mostly. What do you know?”

“Hmm.” Linus scrunched his brow in thought, taking a contemplative chew before speaking plainly. “He’s Marnie’s nephew, though I’m sure you know that given your friendship with her. He came to the town the summer before you arrived, bringing along his goddaughter, Jas, from Zuzu City. Soon after, he found employment with Joja – he tried Pierre’s and the saloon at first, but they both had enough workers and couldn’t afford another employee. He didn’t immediately start going to the saloon, I think it took about… Oh. A month, maybe? But after that, he became a regular, and established himself as, well…”

“The town drunk?” Bear supplied, and Linus nodded with a curl of his mouth.

“One of them, at least. I only come down from the mountain when it’s very, very late, and that’s about when I see him leaving the saloon. I’m given to understand he frequents that establishment every night. I don’t hear many rumors, but…”

“He commonly drinks to excess,” she finished, and Linus nodded.

“Yes.  I’ve heard tell that he was involved in a custody battle for Jas with her grandfather, which I’m not entirely certain how he won, considering everything.”

“Interesting.” It was a mild word, accompanied by a soft puff of air over her coffee before she took a sip. “Do you think it’d be rude to have my mom investigate him?”

“I – it depends on the situation, I think,” Linus managed with some difficulty. Bear took that to mean, _you probably shouldn’t do that._  “What is your interest in this, as a Warden?”

Now, that was a troublesome question, because Bear wasn’t entirely certain herself.

 _(Why was I born?_ he had said to her. Something inside her hurt, an old sort of ache like a weathered piece of wood at the end of a pier. She tried to ignore it.)

“It’s… not that I think Shane is a danger to the town,” she said slowly, and then realizing that was giving Linus the wrong impression, clarified. “Truly. I do not. However, I – think there’s more to my position than just honoring the old ways and trying to regain the favor of the forces which once blessed this town. It’s about the _people._ If they have problems, I, as a Warden, I should care. I should help them. And… I haven’t really been doing much of that, have I…?”

“Bear,” Linus said, concern in his voice, and she held up a hand to indicate she wasn’t quite finished yet.

“It’s true. Don’t try to deny it. I barely know the character of Pelican Town; and perhaps I have my excuses, and perhaps I’ve done my duties on the surface, but I haven’t _truly_ become the caretaker of this place. That won’t happen until I do what Jeremiah used to. Everyone loves him here, adores his memory, and while I may not share his blood, I have _chosen_ to bear his burden. This was my _choice._ I should fulfill my obligations. And – I’ve been thinking that I should start with Shane, who clearly needs help.”

(How he had cried that night, leaving Bear without the _slightest idea_ of what to say.)

“Bear,” Linus tried again, and this time she didn’t interrupt. “You… Look – his problems likely run deeper than you can imagine. Please don’t force yourself to do things you aren’t comfortable with. I know you have trouble with people, and you’re already doing so much already _._ Jeremiah lost his life performing his duties, and Eileen _almost_ lost hers. You’ve already taken on enough. You don’t have to do any more.”

“You don’t have to make me feel better, Linus. I know what I am. I know _who_ I am. And I know that I always have to do better. It’s what gives my life value.”

“You shouldn’t think of it like that.” Linus' voice sounded tired, worn. This was old, old ground, an old fight that they’d gone back and forth on since time began. Bear knew this, but she couldn’t back down. She was speaking the truth. 

“Why not?” she shrugged idly, and took another gulp of coffee before setting it down on the table. “I am defined by my position. Therefore, I ought to do the best at it that I can, because otherwise… what am I?”

“You’re a lovely young woman who shouldn’t destroy herself over a childhood guilt-complex.”

“Guilt-complex. Hah.” It was a bitter sound, with little mirth to it. Bear wasn’t one for laughter, really. She was too perpetually grim, even when she did speak about lighthearted topics. “That’s irrelevant. He’s my charge regardless. However, I am in an extremely poor position to aid him. So please, if you care… I’d like advice on my approach rather than a lecture.” 

“I’m not… exactly the best person to go to about that,” he said somewhat slowly, but finally gave up with a slump of his shoulders. “But I’ll try. How’re things between you now? I assume something had to have happened, or else you wouldn’t be bringing this up.”

“Mmph,” Bear grunted. She had won her fight; there was no need to be overly elaborate now. “Can’t tell. I _know_ he dislikes me – “

“How do you know that?” Linus interrupted, and Bear paused, the contemplation of a woman who was carefully curating her words.  
  
“When I introduced myself to him, he called me an… idiot, and told me in no uncertain terms to never speak to him again.”

“Ah,” Linus said, being, in turn, a man who could read between the lines. “Are you… sure that you want to…?”

Something lingered in her hesitation -  a vague sense of unease, the coiled-up memory of a thousand avoided encounters – but she ignored it, and steeled her heart to the verdict she’d already set in stone.

 “Yes.”

“Very well." The only thing Linus could do was accept it. “What have your interactions been like since?”

“We haven’t really… talked. Much. I think he’s afraid of me. He – stares. You know.” She turned her hands palm up and looked at them – they were just so huge compared to everything else. “And he definitely doesn’t seem happy to be around me. But last night…”

Bear averted her eyes. “I found him very, very drunk in the woods.  He confided in me that he felt terrible about how bad of a father he is. I – invited him over for a flower viewing with Jas, so they could spend time together, but… that… I don’t really know how to speak to him. How to help him beyond that. Do you have any insight? You’ve met a lot of people over the course of your life; have any been similar to Shane?”

Linus stuffed an entire pancake in his face. Chewed. Swallowed. Some syrup got in his beard, but he didn’t seem to notice as he let out a long, drawn out “Well…”

He was given more time to stall than he had intended, however, because another knock broke through this small breakfast conversation and brought them both to a tense, surprised silence.


	6. A Story of Things That Are Better Left Unsaid

Bear had a problem.  A big, unfortunate, now-sober and currently standing on her porch problem.

Her question to Linus about how to approach Shane hadn’t been a meager one, nor had it been one that could be answered subtly or simply. Bear had asked him not because she wanted to confirm something, or because she needed confidence in something her heart had already decided, but because she, honestly and truly, had no idea how to react around the man she wanted to aid.

Ah, yes, she’d certainly spoken boldly to him about her _duties_ and her _beliefs_ and about bettering herself. But that was what made her a true coward, wasn’t it? All of these high-minded notions and ideals, but because of her fear, she couldn’t achieve any of them. What, did she really think she could change? Be someone decent and respectable?

Did she really think she could have any worth in this world?

There were a lot of things she could have said to the man standing at her front door. _Hello,_ perhaps? _Good morning?_ _You look like shit?_ – because it was true, he looked tired and worn out and thoroughly exhausted, but alive, at least he was alive. The doctor had said he would survive when she had brought him to the clinic, but she’d still worried.

She could have said, _are you feeling better?_ Or maybe, _do you want to talk?_ Express some concern, because clearly he needed that. Clearly he needed someone to just… _care._

But she said none of that. To this man, wearing his dusty blue jacket and with a deep exhaustion permeating his features, she couldn’t articulate anything at all. She just was frozen there, captured by the knowledge that what she wanted and what she could achieve were two entirely different things. Despite everything she desired, being confronted with him caused her heart to freeze solid in her chest.

In that moment, Bear wanted to say everything, and so she could say nothing because _everything was far too much._

“Uh,” Shane said, a gloominess to his posture. He couldn’t even raise his eyes to hers, staring at her bare feet like a sulky child who was being forced to apologize to a teacher. “…Uh, you’re in your pajamas?”

No _hi._ No _hello._ No _good morning,_ or any of those normal conversational intros that she’d become accustomed to. All Bear could say was “…Yes?” And hoped things would work out.

They didn’t.

“I – I probably came too early, huh.”

What Bear wanted to say was _no, that’s not true, it’s fine._ It also would have been acceptable to say, _oh shit, you’re right, should I change?_ and, as a third option, _man I’m sorry I got annoyed with you yesterday, I really didn’t know how to react to what was happening also I was tired and thinking about all the shitty times with my dad with a side_ -order of _sorry for bringing up the patriarchy, I hear a lot about it at home_ , but no. She said none of that.

She just stepped aside and ordered him inside with a sharp, tersely said, ”Come in."

He looked so scared, like he was this little mouse-man who was balking at being invited into her den to be carved into filet mignon and served on a silver platter. She regretted ~~her choice of words~~ absolutely everything immediately.

Shane obeyed, though, slinking inside before stopping dead just beyond the doorway. His eyes went wide, seeming surprised – taken aback, even, and he put his hands in his pockets, like he was retreating into his own jacket for safety. It took her a second to realize that his attention had settled on Linus, who was, for his part, trying to clean gooey tree-sap off of his beard.

Oh no. This was a disaster. Bear was terrible at talking, she’d just frightened Shane, and Linus wasn’t really much of a social butterfly these days either. He really just wanted to stay out of everyone’s way. Why had she thought any of this was a good idea? – Well. Actually, maybe it’d be appropriate to say _she hadn’t thought at all._

What would fix this?

Pie.

Pie would fix this.

“Sit,” she said to Shane, and went to the oven.

“Uh – o-okay?” he replied, tentatively making his way over to the table. For a moment, he debated on which seat to take – across from Linus or next to Linus? – but he chose across, and then stiffly took his seat, trying to look at everything but the people inside the room.

There was quite a lot to look at, considering Bear’s home decorating technique literally just consisted of _plants, everywhere,_ interspersed with pretty rocks, odd knick-knacks, photographs, an assortment of shells from the beach, and other oddities she’d found on the ground.

“Good morning, Shane,” Linus spoke, perhaps because he was in the mood to do Bear a kindness by not turning her dining room into an incinerator of awkward silence. She thanked him internally as she pulled the glass door open and fetched the blackberry pie she’d kept to cool overnight, then gathered up more plates and a knife to serve it with.

“Uh… mornin’,” Shane replied, clearly uncomfortable, and Bear could hear the fabric of his jacket shuffle as he fidgeted. _Poor Linus,_ she thought. If Shane said anything untoward about the hermit, she _would_ kick him out, no ifs-ands-or-buts about it. It didn’t matter if she wanted to help him or not; she would allow none of her friends to be slandered in her home.

And – she knew people did slander him for his way of life. If Shane was judging the man across from him, however, he didn’t say it, instead continuing with, “I… didn’t know you knew the farmer.”

Linus chuckled, pushing his plate away with a soft grind of ceramic. “We’ve crossed path a fair few times, yes. I bring her things from the forest, and she’s kind enough to can them and preserve them for me.”

“I…” A pause. “I thought you didn’t believe in that kind of thing? Er, using, like. Manmade technology, I guess?”

Bear tensed a bit, internally sweating, but the sincerity of the question made Linus laugh once more.

“No, no. Living with the land doesn’t mean I can’t strike up a partnership with someone else to make things that I cannot. Besides, Bear respects the earth as much as I do. Trading with her is very fulfilling.”

“I… see,” Shane said slowly. “Uh… Sorry for interrupting your breakfast. I just wanted to talk to her.”

He indicated her with a just of his thumb, which she only saw from the corner of her eye.

“Oh, no need to worry. I was actually just about -” Linus stood just as Bear was approaching, and he stopped when he saw the three plates in her hand, along with three triangular slices that oozed mashed berries and thick, purple syrup. Small pieces for her and Linus, a larger one for Shane. He probably hadn’t eaten yet.

“Um,” she said. “Should I not have…?”

“…To stay for some delicious pie. You really are spoiling me.”

Secretly, Bear was glad he hadn’t evacuated the premises just yet. She wasn’t sure she’d emotionally prepared herself to talk to Shane alone.

The man in question looked surprised as she set a piece before him, blinking down at the honey-colored crust, before glancing back up at her face then down once more. “Uh, I didn’t – I mean - …Thanks?”

Bear nodded, then set the two other pieces down before suddenly realizing – “Ice cream.”

“W-What?” Shane stuttered out, plainly confused at her sudden declaration, but Bear ignored him, immediately striding to the freezer and opening the compartment to reveal the chilly interior. Ah, good. She had vanilla still.

“Pie always tastes best with ice-cream,” Bear explained, opening one of the drawers under the counter with a sharp _shunk_ and retrieving a scoop. “It’s the law.”

“Have you started making your own, yet?” Linus asked curiously. Bear looked over at him, not glancing at Shane, despite how he was staring at her. It – made her feel _weird,_ both how baffled he looked, and also…

Just the thought of meeting his gaze was enough to make her feel sick. It was like if he looked her in the eyes, he’d see all of her sins and all of her mistakes laid out naked and bare like the merchandise on the blanket of a travelling salesman. She hated that sensation, hated feeling like an ugly worm under the scrutiny of the sun – and so she avoided it, talking to Linus, who she was comfortable with, instead of addressing Shane properly.

“No, not yet. I have to order the supplies to make my own from the city… this is from Joja. Is that okay?” Bear said, her face scrunched a bit to convey the displeasure of procuring _anything_ from the hell-market. Honestly, she hadn’t even been able to buy it herself. She’d asked Jodi to pick her up a pint the next time she went.

Vincent’s mother truly was too kind to her.

“Well, it can’t be helped sometimes.”

“You need an ice-cream maker?” Shane spoke up. Despite her surprise, Bear didn’t look at him, only grunting in affirmation before scooping out a portion for each of them.

“Marnie has one. I’m… surprised Jas hasn’t told you about it.”

Bear was too, and she paused, considering the possibilities this opened up. “Wonder if she’d let me use it?”

“Probably,” Shane shrugged, and then with kind of a weird expression on his face, said, “You two seem to get on well, so…”

Bear didn’t know what to say to that, so she finished what she was doing, popped the plastic lid back onto the tub, and then returned it to its home in the freezer.

(It was satisfying, and she felt better after it was done. Everyone had food, everything had a place, and she could return to the table with a lighter heart. Sure, she was still scared, and still didn’t know what to say. Sure, there was this weird _buzz_ overlaid over her thoughts and vibrating in her bones, making her throat close up and making it hard to focus on any one thing at a time, but it was okay.)

Just keep going.

One thing at a time.

Think of Shane not as he is now, but as he looked then, awestruck and staring at the flowers she so loved.

Bear sat back down and stared at her plate. She could smell the sugar, could see the ice-cream glisten as the edges of it melted and turned the juice seeping out of the pie pastel. She heard Shane pick up his fork, clear his throat, and mumble _thanks._ Linus did the same, but he smiled at her, so she looked at that instead.

“Well, that does seem like a good idea. What kind of flavors would you make if you could?”

“Flavors?”

“Since you could make you own, you could get creative. Why, I’ve tried all sorts of interesting things! Spruce tip, salmonberry… even cognac! You can’t find _that_ mass produced at the store.”

Bear hummed lightly in her throat, clutching onto this image as a talisman to keep her sane. Anything to help her forget that a stranger was sitting next to her. “That’s…  hmn. Well. Cranberry, maybe? I’ve planted them for the fall. …Pumpkin? With cinnamon and cloves?”

This was an exciting idea, and Bear felt her heart grow warm as she found something pleasant to latch on to. “Imagine that paired with coffee-cake and streusel. I’d love to make some green tea ice cream, and… mother packed a bungeo-ppang pan with me, I could always fill use ice cream as a filling. Do you know what those are?”

“Ah! That’s… fish-bread, right? Traditionally paired with bean-paste?”

“Yes. You’ve tried them?”

“A long, long time ago. I’ve never been to Goryeo – it’s a bit hard, with the blockade – but I’ve met a number of refugees who’ve fled here when it was conquered by the empire.”

“Mm,” Bear grunted, her nose habitually wrinkling at the topic of the Gotoro, given her mother’s recollections of life under imperial rule. She took the opportunity to steal a quick glance at Shane which was, honestly, a mistake. He had been staring at her, his half-eaten pie before him, and looking at him had brought about a brief and unfortunate flash of eye-contact which she hastily broke. In that single moment, she noted a number of things about his appearance – that his mouth was open, and that his face was red – but she tried not to think about either, realizing it was probably him judging her as a _huge weirdo_ for getting excited about ice cream.

Stupid.

Moron.

Half-wit.

…And something else, too, an insidious word lurking in the silence between her thoughts. The memory of it consumed her, and rendered a few seconds a hazy blur before the sound of Shane’s voice breaking into the conversation caused her to return to reality with a slight start.

“How about… pistachio?”

Bear blinked, staring at her plate and considering this. Pistachio. Pierre sold nuts all year long, and she’d never had something like that before. It seemed like an intriguing proposition, and she liked thinking about that a lot more. “I could try that.”

“It might be too cold to enjoy ice-cream in the winter, but you could always try using the crystal berries that grow here in the Valley. They’re very sweet; I think it’s to attract the winter birds.” Linus added, then looked to Shane again, since this had apparently become a round robin discussion.

The man paused in thought. “Uh… what about…”

A pause.

A longer pause.

“…Can you make ice-cream out of flowers?”

 _“Hm.”_ She frowned.  “A garnish would work; violets are edible. But… maybe rose ice-cream would be possible. With a drizzle of rose-hip jelly?”

Linus, ever one for talk of food, gestured excitedly with his fork. “That’s a wonderful idea! You should write these down so you don’t forget.”

This was a fair enough proposition, and Bear carved a piece of pie, put it into her mouth, and stood.

“I feel dumb for asking, but what are rose-hips?” Shane said behind her, and Linus took the job of explaining… which was good, because her mouth was full, and also she’d probably dump way more information on him than necessary.

She sort of had a problem with that.

“They’re kind of like… fruit of a rose, filled with its seeds to help them spread.”

“I didn’t realize roses had fruit.”

“Mhm. Nature really is amazing, with all of the distinct way plants and animals have adapted to survive. You probably know some of that yourself – you help your aunt with her farm, right?”

Bear shot a quick glance over her shoulder. Shane was looking at Linus now. Thank goodness. The feeling of being stared at was horribly uncomfortable. It made her skin prickle, and only reminded her how much of her there was to stare at.

…Was this… a pleasant chat? She figured it was. Shane seemed to be having a good enough time, slowly eating his pie as Linus laughed. It did something to dampen that awful, distracting ring, but still, everything felt sort of half-hazy and numb. Do one thing, she reminded herself, then the other. List them, order them, organize them – make everything a task, and then it was manageable.

Keep everything in its box. _Contained._ Then, the world was quiet.

Go to the bookshelf. Find her little notebook. It was at the end, tucked next to her field-guides, sketchbooks, cookbooks, and the farmer’s almanac she’d picked up from Pierre. Those were all the texts she had; Bear didn’t read for pleasure, and the rest of the space was devoted to plants.

She stood there, back to the pair of them, and pretended to be busy as she listened. If she was to help him, she needed to listen to him, and it was easier to do that when her back was turned to the room.

“You know about that? Uh, sure, I guess. Mostly the chickens. They’re kinda…”

Shane let out a soft chuckle, and Bear had to admit, it was a nice sound, though it felt a little embarrassed and self-conscious. Maybe he and Linus could become friends? That would be nice. Both men would benefit from having more friends.

 …Was there anyone Shane was even close to in town…? Perhaps that would be a good place to start. She resolved herself to ask Marnie.

“Well, they can be pretty silly, but I like spending time with them. Especially when they all crowd around my feet to get fed. Their feathers get all ruffled, and they all start clucking up a storm.”

Bear took a deep breath, steadied her heart, and returned to the table.  Animal talk; she could do that. To her surprise, Shane looked… kind of, almost, just a little bit _happy._

The stormy clouds perpetually gathered over his brow had relaxed, leaving his features warmer, kinder. His mouth had softened into a gentle smile. It was a small thing – just a little upturned quirk of his lips – but there was a light there, in his eyes, an expression that seemed entirely foreign on his features, leaving his cheek-line just a bit less harsh and his jaw a bit less worn. This was what he should look like, she thought to herself, spreading her little notebook out flat and scribbling a few things down with the stub of a pencil she kept tied to the journal. His shoulders should relax like that more, his eyes should be more fond.

This was what she wanted to happen, and she tried to find strength in that as she drew, noting down the ideas they’d already discussed with quick little doodles. On the opposite page were transcriptions, lettering she’d found in the mines along with an illustration of cave fungus, and – if she turned farther back – the pictures on the pages would be more of the same.

Plants. Animals. The things in the world that were important to her. Hers was a world of pictures, and she found herself getting lost in them as they talked, bounced ideas off of each other, and in Linus’ case, laughed.

She hoped that Shane’s smile would be an image that appeared more often in this world.

 

* * *

 

They spoke for a time like this, and inch by inch, like a rope slowly being unwound, the tension in Bear’s heart abated.  Ah, it didn’t disappear – those tightly bound cords left marks, rugged red streaks around the cavern of her ribs – but it was bearable, more like a slow, even burn than the endless fire of damnation. She was never _comfortable,_ but it became _tolerable,_ and as the prickling of her skin lightened, the soothing balm of her mother’s voice pooled into the hollow spaces in her chest, like a pair of cool arms draped across her shoulders and the sweet smell of hibiscus wafting through the air.

She could hear her clearly, even now, speaking of a love born from a mother’s fervent madness.

_“Words are power, words end nations, words beckon demons and create universes from nothing more than ink scrawled on paper. You say that words do not become you? Hardly. You are the daughter of a witch, my dear. Everything that you have to say **has worth.”**_

It was hard to think like that at times, for despite all her teaching, she’d never truly be a witch herself. Words were never her forte, neither spoken nor written, they fell from her and twisted on the paper when she tried to pin them down and understand. But Bear held onto it now, clutching it in her palm like a flat, smooth stone on the beach – that memory of a voice telling her that any piece of her heart that she offered was a treasured gift, and she should feel no shame in sharing it if it was to her tastes.

She didn’t believe it, deep down – those tender shoots of _self-worth_ hadn’t yet rooted themselves into her spirit – but she knew she had to try, despite the fear. It had stalled her for her entire life, and if she wanted this, she'd have to _pull._

She got her chance when Linus finally stood, smiling down at the pair of them with an easy warmth that Bear knew was partially affected for her sake. Sometimes, it was easier to put yourself out there on behalf of a friend, to support them in their time of need. Bear would thank him later. Without him helping her, she probably would have made an irreparable fool of herself already.

“Well… Thank you for the meal, Bear. I think I’ve taken up enough of your time though, and clearly this young man has something to discuss with you – “ There was a brief nod in Shane’s direction – “So I think I’ll head off.”

Part of Bear wanted to latch onto him and say, _no, please, for the love of everything good and green in this world don’t leave me alone with him,_ but she resisted that desire, giving Linus a stoic nod instead. “Be well. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Uh – yeah, it was… good meeting you?” Shane said, more like a question than an actual assertion, which made Bear feel A Little Weird, Honestly… but she’d come too far in talking herself up to doubt now. Besides, he’d talked with Linus just fine. He probably wasn’t the kind of man who’d throw rocks at the mountain man’s tent.

Probably.

…She couldn’t imagine someone like that would hold so much of Jas’ affection.

“Likewise. If you’re ever in the mountains…” Linus smiled, but didn’t quite finish the sentence before he nodded and went for the door. “Luck be with you both.”

He left. Bear watched him go. And then, there was silence. To fill it, she picked up the plates and took them to the sink.

 _(Stay calm,_ she told herself. _Stay stable.)_

Behind her, Shane spoke.

“The pie – it was really good. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Bear replied automatically. Rote scripts, predictable conversation – she could do this. “What did you want to talk about?”

Internally, she cursed. _That was so blunt._ What had her brother told her, about gentleness? About delicacy?

Water splashed on the bottom of the basin. She filled her mind with the sound of droplets striking metal and the scent of herbs on the sunny sill of the window. She didn’t look at Shane, instead listening to the cadence of his voice as he spoke. Stumbling, a bit stuttery – _awkward,_ though she wasn’t certain if it was being in a stranger’s home or from being in _her_ home, _her,_ the huge, frightening farmer.

Her mind told her it was probably the former; her heart the latter.

“Er, well… I wanted to apologize. For last night, and for, uh. For puking on you, I guess. That was gross, you didn’t deserve that, and I’m sorry you had to drag my dumb ass to the hospital. And – fuck,” he trailed off, mumbling, and when Bear glanced back at him, he was rubbing his face with his palm. “Uh, I know you invited me to that thing with Jas, and I said yes – er, I think I said yes? But I don’t really think I should go. No offense, but…”

She stared at him, water dripping from her hands and onto the floral-printed plates, but when he looked up at her, she snapped her gaze away and back down to her work.

“Why?”

“Uh - ” There was a sharp pause. “Why what?”

“Do you not want to come?”

…If he wanted to avoid her out of personal dislike, that’d mean her efforts to “help him” would never bear any fruit – though she supposed there were more subtle ways of improving someone’s life. She could try to get him a job. She could try to arrange it so he’d have friends. There were options, if she was creative and feeling inclined to meddle.

Her mom loved to meddle. In the worst case, she could simply call her and ask for advice.

“Honestly? I figured you invited me out of pity, and I don’t want you putting up with me for Jas’ sake. It’s not a good position to put any of us in.”

For a moment, Bear stopped moving entirely.

Step by step, she broke it down. First – his voice sounded bitter, rough, having darkened considerably from their earlier talk. Second – he was suggesting that she merely had extended the offer out of condescending sympathy, which… wasn’t _entirely_ untrue, but it didn’t convey the appropriate nuance of her feelings on the matter, so she should elaborate on his misconception. Three, he thought she was putting up with him, which could indicate that _he_ was merely putting up with _her,_ and this entire time he’d just been dying inside and waiting until he could go –

No.

Stop it.

 _You are the daughter of a witch,_ she told herself, and she _also_ told herself that his smile hadn’t been a lie.

So, reassess. She stared at the parsley and its light, feathery leaves, and decided the third relevant point was that Shane was ashamed. He did not like the idea of pity, nor did he appreciate the state he’d been seen in, so now he was trying to wriggle away from her and hide from the shameful truth.

Thinking that three observations was a good enough number to start with, she dried her hands on the dishtowel and calmly sat across from him, folding her hands and levelling her gaze to somewhere around his exposed collarbone.

“I would like you to come,” she said forthrightly, because she didn’t know any other way to be other than as forthright as possible. “It would make Jas happy, it would make me happy, and ultimately – even if you don’t think so right now – I believe it would make you happy.”

It took a moment for this to settle, before Shane sputtered a bit, reminding Bear uncomfortably of that abysmal first meeting that she _told herself to forget about, it was time to move past that._

Jas loved him. _He couldn’t be that bad._

“You think it would make me happy,” Shane said flatly, and Bear nodded, completely uncertain of how to interpret that tone but determined to press on anyway. Sure, Linus hadn’t been able to offer any advice in the end, but he’d shown her something just as important.

Think of that smile. It humanized him to her, and made this all easier to bear.

“Yes.”

“And… that’s… why, exactly?”

“You’re someone who needs flowers,” Bear said without hesitation, speaking straight from the heart and trying to hold nothing back. She’d seen it that day, just before she’d plucked that dahlia for him and placed it in his hair. She’d seen the longing, the desire, both the sadness and the muted joy at the sight of her house clothed in gossamer floral wreath. She’d seen it, and in that moment had felt a brief sense of _kinship_ with him. Maybe it hadn’t been that night on the docks that had been the seed for this desire to help Shane; maybe it had been that short conversation, and the desire that had burned there in his eyes.

“I know what it’s like. Everything is wretched, like… you forget what it feels like to be clean. There’s no hope, because everything that exists in the world is ugly. And that’s why we have flowers. That’s why we need them, to remind us that there’s something beautiful and that beauty grows inside us. I don’t want you to come view the fairy roses this weekend because I _pity_ you, I want you to see them because I think it’ll help you grow as a person, and because I think Jas’ memories should have you in them. I want you to see that what you’re looking for exists in this world.”

 _Like what happened to me,_ she thought but didn’t say, and then finally raised her eyes to his face.

She wasn’t sure how Shane was going to react; shock she certainly expected, maybe irritation, judgement would fit with her general familiarity with the world, and – in an ideal paradise, what she would have seen was relief. But none of this matched up with what was there, tucked in his eyes and hardened at the corner of his mouth. Shane went quiet, his eyes turning to cool chips of dark granite and his face going stony and cold. His jaw tightened, his eyebrows furrowed, and what was there wasn’t even _disgust –_

It was anger.

“Do you – do you seriously think _flowers_ are going to fix my problems? _Fucking flowers?”_

In the end, every little thing she’d told herself, every protection and barricade she’d constructed – assembling motivational reminders like charms and talismans – was nothing in the face of that bitter snarl. Her thoughts turned to a dull hum. Nothing seemed more desirable to her than escape. She looked away, looked anywhere but at him, her heart bound in iron shackles and her mind anywhere but in her dining room.

He said something else after that. She didn’t hear it – it was just empty, white noise. Blankly, she stared at the flowers on the table. Orange, white, yellow, pink. Flat face, multiple layers of petals, long and thin and arranged in a circle. Thin hairs on the sepals. She stared at the florets, counting each little petal.

Everything closed up. Everything withered. _Please don’t notice me,_ she said to herself, praying that he’d get up and leave. _Please forget about me. Please, let’s pretend this never happened and I’ll go back to minding my own business._

Bear could walk a hundred miles. She could fight her way through the mines. She could purge demons, inscribe sigils, renew wards and banish evil – but this was far more than she could do. With care and love, she could tend the fields, with grace and decorum, she could grow her flowers, but something as simple as _conveying herself to a human being –_ that was something she had, not once, not ever, been able to do.

She didn’t even understand why he was angry.

Shane stood. He said something else. She tried to hold onto it, but the words slipped through her fingers, and she only got the general shape of it instead.

_“Look, I’m just – going to go. Don’t bother me again.”_

And then there was something else, his hands clenched on the chair, his eyes squeezed shut (guilt? no -) but she couldn’t properly endure it and she just habitually said, “Okay,” because sometimes just saying _okay, I understand_ makes problems go away faster.

_Accept it._

_Don’t fight it._

_Let them do what they will, because you can endure that, just go into your head and endure it, and they’ll get bored and everything will be quiet faster._

_(_ At this point, her thoughts had gone completely beyond Shane to someplace entirely different, something older and more worn, like returning to a rough, raggedly cut groove.)

It vaguely registered that he was staring at her. Probably, he was waiting for a reply. “I’m sorry,” she said, because she was used to that, and she figured – whatever it was – would fit the situation.

He was silent. She saw his hands tighten on the back of the chair before he pulled back sharply, jerkily, like he’d just been burned.

“Just – leave me alone, okay?” he turned, striding to the door and wrenching it open. “It’s better for everyone.”

The door closed with a slam and Bear was left there, miserable, staring at nothing but the contents of her own mind.

What had she been thinking? What had she even been trying to do? In the end, Linus was right, as he always was. She should just stick to what she knew. She should just protect the town, treating it like the figurines in an old woman’s cabinet – look, but don’t touch. Clean gently with a feather duster, and put them back exactly where they belonged. No need to reorder. No need to reorganize.

Everything had its place, and hers was on the outside. Occasionally she’d be invited in by the kinder ones, the gentler ones – Marnie, who knew the hearts of animals, Jas, who knew the hearts of flowers, and Linus, who knew the heart of the earth. They understood her, for she had the shape of the things they loved more than she had the shape of a person. Evelyn, Jodi – cling to those, and ignore all the rest. Everything was fine that way.

That was how it should be.

Bear let her forehead thunk on the table and regretted opening her mouth at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope the premise of this story should is pretty clear now: i.e. a man with severe depression falls for a woman with severe social anxiety, where both of their issues prevent them from understanding what the hell the other is thinking.
> 
> prepare to suffer in slow burn hell.
> 
> oh! ps, i did some doodles of Bear and threw them up on tumblr, if you're inclined to take a look.
> 
> http://wrenchsprout.tumblr.com/post/165081803352/im-a-trash-person-who-likes-doodling-shane-x-my


	7. A Story of Sulking, and the Mythical Properties of Sugar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the wonderful comments on the last chapter. I appreciate every one of them! I hope you guys like this one as well. PS, I'm a chronic drabble writer, so if you ever have a suggestion, feel free to make it in the comics or to my tumblr, glitterbark.tumblr.com. ^^

Evelyn’s hands were thin and white, slivers of faded parchment worn by the sun. Yet, she worked dutifully despite the fragility of her joints, peering down with pride as the flowerbeds blossomed beneath her cunning and tender hands. The world wasn’t as bright to her as it used to be, wasn’t as clear, but the colors were still – and would always be – beautiful. For the town, she managed these public gardens, taking pride in the work that she did. Age would only defeat her if she allowed it to.

Despite the weakness setting into her body, despite how, year by year, she came closer to the twilight and the last glimmering rays of light of her life – her purpose kept her spirit from decaying. Purpose kept your heart young. Purpose was everything, and in the end, the flowers kept Evelyn from truly growing old. Seeing it gave Bear some measure of peace.

That was what she wanted to be, one day, her legacy given to the earth and her name remembered for the good that she had sowed.

For now, though, she was just a miserable woman who couldn’t even begin to approach Evelyn’s tenacity and grace, and she sighed beside her as she weeded, setting aside the unwanted plants in a heap so they wouldn’t strangle the squat anemones, the bursts of vibrant chrysanthemums, and the sunflowers stretching to the heavens  and splayed out flat for the sun. Asters, short and pale blue, drifted in the breeze, nestled underneath a bluebeard shrub and thick patches of heather that attracted lazily floating bees and butterflies to their cuplike blooms. Heleniums, with their thick, bulbous heads and long, rounded orange petals dusted at the ends with light yellow, shifted slightly as Bear dug her hands into the dirt, pulling out the young pigweeds and crabgrasses that had settled in between the more desirable autumn blossoms.

They were trying to make everything look as good as possible for the Stardew Valley Fair that would close out the month. It was a festival of pride, of the town showing its character to the world – and it felt good to be aiding in this, to be doing her duties as a Warden in even this small way. Still, her mind kept straying to the events of the week, and despite the normally distracting nature of her work, she found her brows furrowed into her version of a frown.

Canny as she was, Evelyn noticed, dusting off her gloves with a light _paff-paff_ before standing. “Having you along certainly makes the work speedy, dearie! I think we’ve done enough, though, so how about you come in for a cup of tea and some cookies? The postman brought me a wonderful blend that I’d love to share with you.”

Bear looked up at her, hesitating. Cookies sounded wonderful, and she’d grown a taste for tea over the years, but that look in Evelyn’s eyes meant that she was going to have a _conversation,_ and _conversations_ made her nervous.

However, Bear was at a loss and Linus hadn’t been able to help her, so perhaps it would be in her interests to accept. The older woman’s inner strength might rub off on her with enough encouragement, and she certainly needed it at this point. It helped that Evelyn was kind and easy to talk to. Perhaps the easiest person to talk to that she knew, really.

Evelyn knew pain. Evelyn understood pain. But – in an admirable turn of fate – she’d used pain to make her kinder, and so Bear trusted her in a way that she didn’t trust most people.

“…Okay.”

Bear gathered up the dirt-soaked weeds into her arms, a bundle that exuded a fresh, earthen scent that naturally perfumed her simple clothes. Evelyn made her own compost, and Bear brought the pile over to the bin, heaving them in among a motley of egg-shells and table-scraps before following her inside.

Her house was warm; that was the feeling she’d always gotten from it, emanating from the honey-colored drapes and the sturdy wooden floors. Love was stained into the polished table, love was buffed into the worn, slightly rusted kettle, love was crumpled into the dish-towels and love was baked into the nutty smell of melted butter and brown sugar that hung around the stove. Evelyn had her afternoon’s baking cooling there, evidently, because she opened up the glass-face to reveal sheets of rounded, still-warm cookies, pale and dusted with granules of sugar.

Bear took in a deep breath, then went to the bathroom to clean up. When she returned, she found the kettle on, plates on the table, and she could hear the sounds of a soft conversation transpiring between Evelyn and her husband George, who was – as usual – seated in front of the television in the other room.

Bear didn’t have much of an opinion on George, other than a general sort of appreciation for him as a central fixture in the woman’s life. He was bad-tempered, easily annoyed, and terse – and he often seemed unhappy with his wife, but there were moments like this too, where Bear watched them both from the doorway. Evelyn had her thin, small hands on the back of his chair, leaning over him with wisps of white strands from her bun falling across her weathered cheekbone, and he was looking away, seeming somewhat shy with something like pain on his features.

It felt very private, and the sound of their voices was too quiet to hear, so she broke away from the image, instead taking a seat and waiting for the older woman to return.

It took a few minutes, but just as the water was boiling, Evelyn joined her once more.

“Sorry to keep you waiting; I just wanted to have a quick word with George.”

“Was it about Alex?” Bear asked instinctively, then regretted having done so as it sounded like she was trying to pry. It wasn’t her business. Except - well.

No. As Eileen always said, everything was her business, wasn’t it? The world was a puzzle, and you had to demand answers from it if you were ever going to get anywhere at all. Though, truth be told, Bear wasn't much inclined towards making demands.

Evelyn declined to answer beyond a slightly tired smile, and a statement of, “Let me fix us up some tea.”

Bear waited, stewing in this. Evelyn was a calming presence, a relaxing one – from their very first meeting, she’d been nothing but kind to Bear. It would be a lie to say she wasn’t concerned about the woman’s situation at all, though she didn’t know her family beyond brief encounters with George and a single conversation with Alex that had happened in the spring.

Alex seemed to have a… bit of the wrong idea of her, and complimented her on things she was neither comfortable with nor particularly proud of. It was a bit awkward, honestly. She had seen some of Evelyn’s tender heart in him – especially when she walked by the penned enclosure that he kept his dog in and saw him out there, laughing as the animal licked his face – but she’d never really talked to him in any appreciable way.

She knew enough to know that a shadow had been cast over the household, but not enough to know why.

But. Evelyn didn’t seem to want to dwell on it today, instead setting both the pot and the tray on the table before settling down with a smile.

“Now, my eyesight might not be as good as it used to be, but I can still tell when a young lady is troubled. What is it, dearie? Is it about a boy?”

“A boy…?” Bear repeated, shifting her gaze to the side in thought. She wasn’t certain she liked the implication there, but Evelyn’s query was innocuous enough that she didn’t mind. She was a grandmother. Of course that was the kind of question she’d ask. “It’s about a boy, but it’s not a boy problem. Actually…”

She sighed, and then stared into her reflection in the black tea that Evelyn poured out for her and pushed over to her side of the table, observing the way the liquid darkened near the edges and shone at the bottom of the cup in a warm, red hue. “It’s more about the problems of a little girl, so maybe it’d be better called a ‘girl problem’ instead.”

That had Evelyn’s interest, and she peered at Bear over her delicate teacup. “Is something the matter with Jas?”

“Yes,” said Bear, miserably. “And I have no idea how to fix it.”

Evelyn could do nothing but smile. “Well, tell granny what’s the matter, and maybe I can work my magic, hmm?”

 

* * *

 

After Bear’s disastrous altercation with Shane, she’d spent the afternoon sulking.

Sulking, for Bear, was a time-honored tradition. She spent quite a lot of time engaged in the pursuit, as she had the tendency to amass large quantities of things to fret over, going over and over them ad-nauseum in her mind as she threw herself into the pits of despair. The thing she’d said to the grocer, the way she’d composed herself when speaking to Gus, the excitement with which she’d talked to Penny about flowers and the resulting shame at having dumped buckets of unnecessary information on her – these were all things that required a good old fashioned sulk, and they were small offences that didn’t even begin to approach the level of what had happened with Shane. He’d exceeded all of her expectations on that front, he’d shown her that there were new and unique ways for her to mess everything up.

She didn’t understand. She felt like she couldn’t understand. And it was frustrating, because her mom was _so good_ at understanding, at picking people clean like she was scavenging crab meat for Mi-sook's dumplings, and Bear…

Tried, but ultimately failed. It wasn’t even that she _was unobservant._ In isolation, she felt like she could grasp Shane’s problems. She could roughly follow the chain of events and link them up to what she saw before her. Bear knew Jas’ parents were dead. Bear knew Shane had been close enough to said parents for them to want their daughter to be in his custody. Because of Jas' reminiscences about him from her youth, Bear knew that the girl had known him all her life, which further added evidence that Jas’ parents had been a key fixture to him emotionally and having lost them must have hurt.

Trauma led to alcohol as a coping mechanism.

Further, there’d been a custody battle for Jas, indicating some other presence in her life hadn’t seen Shane as a suitable guardian. Yet, Jas was happy with Shane, cared for him deeply, _and never spoke of this mysterious grandfather,_ indicating a lack of emotional attachment – perhaps Jas had never known him? – or, alternatively, it could be a  _negative_ attachment, some outside reason that made Shane desperate to keep her from her blood family and instead take her in.

Something the courts would rule over – there had to be history there, and it had to be ugly, because naturally Jas would have been given to her blood kin without outside circumstances otherwise interfering. Furthermore, from the way he spoke and dressed, it was clear he wasn’t particularly affluent, and he’d found it necessary to move away from the city, where he’d lived with Jas, to be with his aunt in Stardew Valley.

This must have been done out of desperation. Shane clearly didn’t want to be here; it was in his actions, in how he talked. It was in the fact that he worked at Joja, despite hating the job (and how could he _not_ ) and his general disinclination towards interacting with the community. It hadn’t been an exciting choice, coming here. It hadn’t been something he wanted. So his prospects had to have been poor in the city, and he – _despite being young –_ was fiercely loyal enough to Jas to take her in despite the burden it put on him.

The fact that he had _fought_ to keep her despite it leading him to a situation that left him grotesquely unhappy spoke wonders.

He probably had alcoholic leanings before he arrived. With Joja, with his nights at the Saloon – the way she’d heard it, it was like he’d tried to fight for a short while (by finding alternate work) before giving into despair and just going with what he knew. The way he spoke of himself indicated something similar.

 _“I’ve forgotten what things being good is like!”_ Her memory supplied, with its normal, exacting keenness. Wherever his trauma stemmed from, it was carved so deeply into his soul that he couldn’t scrub it away, no matter how hard he tried.

 _“Everything I touch - I make it worse!” –_ he was used to failure, used to things not working out, so used to it that when things didn’t go well for him upon arriving in Pelican Town, he couldn’t overcome it and instead went back to old comforts. How could she blame him? Hell – if his friends had just died, and he’d just withstood an ugly war to protect their daughter at what was a great cost to his life… how could he have done anything different?

 _“Why can’t I be decent, for, like, two seconds?” –_ he was ashamed. He was embarrassed. He wanted to be different, but couldn’t find the path to do so. He had the desire, just not the torch to light his way.

“Why am I even alive?” – maybe he wondered why he’d outlived his friends, people who’d been so close to him that they were family. _“Why was I even – “_

( _“Why were you even born?”_ _she’d shrieked, dark hair streaming across her face, brown eyes narrowed and teeth bared in wretched misery. “Because of you - "_

Bear silenced the thought with a swallow, leaning back into the grass that she’d been sitting on and covering her face with her forearm. The sky was blue. The wind was blowing. She could hear the trees.

It wasn’t snowing.

After about a minute, she let out a shaky breath, shifting so she was looking at the fluffy clouds above unhindered, and took stock of the situation.

She got some of it. She was certain of it. And she had a general sense of what his life had probably been like up to this point, but even so, she couldn’t convey herself properly to that man. Couldn’t engage him on his terms. She knew what, generally, she had to say, but she didn’t know how to say it or in what order to say it in. And just as she was thinking that maybe it would be easier to give up, to improve his situation through more indirect means…

Jas arrived for a visit.

Bear didn’t notice her at first, so wound up was she in her own despair. But, she heard the crunching of leaves a few inches by her ear, and she turned her head in surprise to see the round-faced girl staring down at her, half leaned over with her hands on her knees and a curious expression on her face.

“What’re you doing, Miss Bear?”

Bear propped herself up on her elbows, not bothering to brush off any of the bits of dirt and grass that still clung to her shirt or the back of her head. “Taking a rest. Shouldn’t you be with Miss Penny right now?”

Jas shook her head in a quick tumble of hair. “She’s sick today, so Aunt Marnie said to just do my sums and that I could go out and play when I was finished. Vincent isn’t done yet, so I’m waiting for him. Is it okay if he comes here?”

Bear felt a tinge of amusement, wondering if someone had chided Jas for inviting whoever she wanted to Bear’s property without permission. She didn’t particularly mind – well. Okay. It _could_ be a bit daunting not to be prepared, but she wasn’t annoyed with her. Jas was eager and fascinated with farm life, and Bear couldn’t fault her for her enthusiasm. It was much better than her being constantly nervous around her, or scared of her large swaths of cultivated land.

“Sure, Jas. Were you wanting to play by the pond again?”

“Maybe, we’ll see. Vincent might want to draw flowers with me again,if I promise him I'll draw bugs with him too. Are you busy?”

“Umm,” Bear replied, squinting at her mostly-done work and then sitting up fully. “Not terribly. Why?”

Jas folded her hands behind her back, looking away in a manner that almost seemed… Embarrassed? Ashamed? _Nervous?_ “I wanted to talk.”

What a terrifying sentence. Still, Bear patted the spot beside her, and Jas folded her dress underneath her, taking a seat beside the taller woman.

It took her a moment to compose herself, fidgeting with her fingers and the pink fabric stretched across her lap, but after biting her lip, she looked up and over at Bear. It was a tense expression, and it concerned Bear, though she thought she might have a general idea of what she wanted to talk about.

As kindly as possible, Bear said, “What is it, Jas?”

“It’s… about Uncle Shane. Miss Bear – what do you… think about him?”

Ah.

Jas stared straight at her, miserable. It wasn’t a surprising question, but it still wasn’t one she quite knew how to answer.

Especially right now.

Bear looked at the sky and sighed. “Well, it’s clear he loves you a lot. Why?”

“Um.” Fidget, fidget. “Well, it’s just… I kind of... I was hoping… Miss Bear – do you _like_ him?”

A pause. “What,” Bear said, flatly, because she didn’t know any other way to say things. “Uh?”

“I don’t mean – _like_ like. I mean, normal like. Do you normal-like Uncle Shane?”

“Excuse me?” Bear tried again. Normally, she just tried to address children like they were miniature adults that you needed to be especially kind to, but that wasn’t working in this scenario. This was not what she was expecting at _all._ “Do you mean… are we friends?”

“Yes! Well, sort of! I know you two don’t know each other very well, so you can’t be friends right now, but are you going to become friends?”

“Um.” Bear was desperate for any way to stall and give herself some time to figure out what the hell to say to this strange, earnest girl. “Where is this coming from, exactly?”

 _Wait,_ she couldn’t help but think. _Has Jas been…?_

“Well, it’s just – I’ve kind of been hoping – ever since that one time, when Shane was sick and you helped me decorate his door and then he came and sat outside with us… I’ve been trying to get you two to talk more!”

She said this passionately, with a hint of desperation, turning so her hand was resting on the ground and so she was leaning towards Bear. Bear could see the trees behind her, and the leaves rustling, and she tried to focus on that instead of the dawning horror that she had _no idea_ how to explain to Jas that her godparent hated her.

“I _know_ he doesn’t really… have any friends, and he can be kind of grumpy around people sometimes – well, a lot of the time, actually - but when I came to town Aunt Marnie and Miss Jodi set me and Vincent up to be friends, even though I was kind of… well, even though I didn’t want to – but it was really nice in the end! It made things a lot better for me! So… I was just, I was sort of hoping…”

Her eyes were wide, disastrously so, and with _just a little hint of a shine_ that stabbed Bear straight in the heart.

“That I could set you up to be Shane’s friend? Please?”

“J-Jas – “

“You don’t – you don’t have to force yourself, if you really don’t like him!” Jas waved her hands, panicked now. “I won’t be mad! And, um, I understand – I love my Uncle, but he acts kind of weird around you! I mean, not just you, he acts weird around _most_ people, but he’s really, really, really nice inside! And I think you could be someone he really gets along with, because you never get mad about anything!”

“I-Is that so,” Bear managed, trying desperately not to shut down because apparently, she couldn’t even handle a ten year old girl being particularly earnest.

Or sad.

Oh shit she was getting _sad._

“People get mad… at Uncle Shane a lot, and it never helps him. But you’re so kind, and so patient, even when Vincent brings you slugs or when I ask you a lot of questions, so I thought… maybe you could be nice to him. And not get angry if he says something mean. Or…”

She clutched at her sleeve with one hand. “Or… when he does something bad and has to go to the doctor.”

Oh.

_Oh._

“Did… something happen, Jas?” Bear said, despite absolutely knowing that something had happened, and she was just playing dumb because the thought of Jas asking for any details about That Night made her nauseous herself.

“This morning, I overheard Doctor Harvey talking to Aunt Marnie, and… Shane… got really, really, _really_ sick last night, and um… I was…”

Carefully, quietly, Bear said, “You want me to be friends with him because you think it’ll… help things like that not happen anymore?”

Tearfully, Jas nodded, pressing a hand to her face as she sniffled. “I, I felt a lot better after being friends with Vincent, so maybe Shane would feel better after becoming friends with you? And, it was a lot of fun, being with you both, and it’d be even more fun if he was more comfortable and wanted to talk more, and – and, and I really want him to get better, because I’m scared if he doesn’t, that he’ll… that I’ll…”

Bear put a hand on Jas’ shoulder, squeezing, and perhaps this gave her the courage to say what she wanted to say – or maybe it was going to come out anyway, the flow of her despair impossible to stymie. “I’m scared I’ll have to leave him, and I don’t want to. _Ever._ So please, Miss Bear, i-if you can, if it wouldn’t… be too much trouble…”

(She said this so politely, even as a tear dripped down her nose and onto her lap.)

“W-Would you maybe, please try to be Shane’s friend? For me?”

“Okay,” Bear said, because she was a coward who would rather take a dagger in the stomach than even entertain the idea of disappointing a little girl. “I will.”

With that single sentence, she’d doomed herself entirely.

 

* * *

 

Bear had her face on the table, forehead meeting the hard edge and her arms crossed on her lap. She’d already eaten three cookies, and the fourth was on the plate, divided in two with a bite mark and now abandoned in Bear’s abject despair.

“And that’s it. That’s my situation. I don’t know what to do. There’s no way I can recover from this _._ ”

Misery permeated every facet of her character. How could it not? She was, as the saying goes, between a _rock and a hard place –_ the boulder of Jas’ innocent hopes and the cliff of her wretched anxiety.

“I see,” Evelyn said slowly, setting her tea-cup down with a slight clink. “Tell me, Bear. Are you angry at Shane? I believe… this isn’t the first time he’s said something that’s upset you.”

Bear swallowed. She didn’t want to think about that, but she looked up at Evelyn, her amber eyes framed by her long lashes. “I don’t think he even remembers that. It doesn’t matter.”

Evelyn _tut-tutted_ with her tongue. “That makes it even worse! Your feelings deserve more consideration. Why – sometimes, I’d say ignorance is worse than malice. Malice is conclusive, definite, but ignorance leaves you with some hope, and the expectation that things might be different eventually. Regardless, I didn’t ask if you felt like you _should_ be angry – I’m asking if you _are._ ”

“No? I mean…” Bear sat up then, so she could talk with Evelyn on more equal terms. “It’s my fault, really. If I wasn’t so… _me,_ I’m sure he wouldn’t have said those things. I have a way of bringing out the worst in people, and it wouldn’t really be fair if I got mad about that.”

“That’s nonsense,” Evelyn sniffed in affront. “You did nothing wrong, and even if you did, it wouldn’t be something worth worrying so much over. If you truly feel bad, then… apologize. Let him know you didn’t mean to offend him. But you don’t deserve to be mistreated, and it’s not right that he’s done so. You’re owed an apology as well, along with an explanation for his behavior.”

It was such a contrast to the kindly woman’s normal demeanor that it made Bear blink.

“An apology? He’s not going to give me that. So why should I want it? That’d just mean…” Bear looked away. “I’d stay bitter forever, and that definitely wouldn’t help Jas.”

Evelyn sighed, pouring herself out another cup of tea. “…I’m sure you’re aware that George can be very difficult, and sometimes? It does… wear on me. But we haven’t stayed married for over forty years because we keep quiet when things upset us. We talk. In private, of course, and I often have to be patient with him, but George is the person I understand the most in the world.”

She took a sip, lightly, and then looked straight at Bear. “That isn’t something that just applies to marriage; it’s about friends, acquaintances… anyone that you want to express love to. I think that if you’re willing to be patient with Shane, that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean you should bottle everything up and refuse to communicate with him. Men are silly, and stubborn, and sometimes you don’t get everything you want from them… but that doesn’t mean you should just suppress your emotions and silence yourself to make things easier on them. It’s not your fault if you get hurt; it’s his. Do you understand?”

“I – I think so,” Bear said, though she knew what Evelyn was saying was far, far more difficult to put into practice than it sounded (and she didn't quite agree with it only applying to men, but she wasn't going to press that issue.)  “But I… I’m not angry. Really. I just… want to be able to talk to him like he’s you, or my brother, or someone else I’m comfortable with. I want to know what to say to him. How can I even start communicating with him if I’m so afraid?”

She wanted to fulfill Jas’ wishes, to give her another fun day… and maybe, just maybe, she’d be able to coax that smile out from him, like Linus had.

“Well…” Evelyn mulled over this. “Why not start speaking to him like that? Like he’s a friend?”

A pause. “What?”

“Pretend he’s not a stranger. Pretend he’s a friend. Treat him like you’d treat someone you're close to, not as someone to be afraid of, but as someone you can converse with. Every time you think, “I shouldn’t say that!” or “It’s strange to do that!” just tell yourself he’s your friend already and that you don’t have to be scared. Everything will fall into place naturally after that.”

“But I – Isn’t that – sort of _forward?_ What if I make him uncomfortable? What if I say the _wrong thing_ and really do upset him, and it’s my fault? I can talk easily with you because I know sort of what to say, but with Shane, I have no idea.”

Evelyn’s smile turned sunny. “Oh, dearie. You don’t have to treat him like he’s made of china! You won’t get anywhere if you get caught up in all the little details; you’re going to say awkward things sometimes, or strange things… that’s life. But it doesn’t matter, because you’re a lovely woman, and if he’s as dear to Jas as you say… I think eventually, he’ll be able to appreciate that. As for what happened before? Well, that goes back into what I said about communication. Ask him why what you said upset him. You can’t get everywhere by observing people! You have to hear it from his own mouth.”

“Do you… really think so?”

She nodded, confident. “I absolutely do. So – just… throw yourself into it. Just speak to him. And if he doesn’t want to? Well!”

A laugh. “Sometimes, you need to pester people a little bit. For their own good!”

Bear wasn’t certain how much she agreed with this line of reasoning, but – but she didn’t really have anything else to go on, did she? She looked to the side, mouth twisting, and Evelyn filled in the space.

“…Perhaps you should start by trying to change his mind about this weekend? It does sound like a lovely time.”

“I’ll… try,” Bear said, trying to find the courage within herself. It’d make Jas happy, so _so_ happy, and that girl had been through enough already – so she tried to picture that, and imagine the shape of Shane’s smile.

Just – pretend he’s already your friend. Talk with him. Be honest with him. Communicate with him.

_And try to understand the truth, because by arriving at the core of someone’s heart, you unlock the mystery of who they are._

Bear let out a sigh. What had she gotten herself into…?


	8. A Story of Coercion, and the Ways it Manifests

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whew, sorry for the one week hiatus! I'm out of buffer and a friend visiting gave me zero time to myself last week. I hope you enjoy this chapter, even though I had to write it kind of quickly;; things are being said! Conversations are being had!
> 
> Silence is becoming even more uncomfortably awkward!

At the near side of the river bank, Bear waited patiently for Shane to arrive.

She could see Joja Mart from the other side, its grey-blue surface glinting in the autumn sun. The land around it seemed so drab, so barren, so _lifeless,_ like the building itself exuded an aura of solemn mediocrity that permeated the soil and rendered it as bland as the supermarket’s own metallic siding. Bear knew she was being _dramatic_ about the whole thing, but she couldn’t suppress the wave of contemptuous nausea that filled her whenever she looked at the structure crouched at the end of the path. Joja, as a corporation, inspired in her equal parts hatred and fear. There wasn’t much in life that Bear could allow herself to feel negatively about, but JojaCorp offended her on a basic, primal level. Even a flash of that color _–_ that trademarked JojaBlue that permeated their branding – made her feel uneasy, reminding her of that giant, cold room and her disastrous attempts at being a ‘normal’ person.

…And really, it reminded her of what she stood to lose if she wasn’t good enough as a Warden, because she wasn’t going to go back to that life, no matter what.

Bear hoped he’d arrive soon, so she didn’t have to be in the presence of his horrible workplace any longer than she had to. Of course, overshadowing _that_ was the hope that Shane wouldn’t show up at all, so she could comfortably shrug her shoulders and say ‘well, I tried’ before going back to the farm. Deep down,  though, Bear knew she had to follow through with this. She couldn’t just wriggle out of it.

For Jas’ sake, if nothing else.

Bear had it all figured out, mostly. She couldn’t confront Shane in the saloon – he’d be drunk then, and they’d have an audience, and honestly the situation would be far too reminiscent of their first meeting for Bear to be able to keep her cool. Neither could she approach him when he was on his way for a drink, because he’d be tired, irritable, and would just push past her to get said drink as soon as possible. She couldn’t talk to him at home, because that would be too late, and he didn’t go anywhere else than the bar and work, so obviously she had to talk to him in the morning before he clocked in. An added bonus to that was that Shane probably didn’t want to be going to work in the first place, so he might be less resistant to a diversion keeping him away for a few minutes. That might turn into a double-edged sword – he might be concerned about being late – but honestly? Bear could deal with that.

 _Just treat Shane like he’s already a friend_ , she told herself, puffing up her chest. _Just talk to him like you know him. Things will work out. Things will –_

“Bear! Hello there!” called a familiar voice from a few yards away, and immediately, Bear deflated, her gut transforming into a roiling mess of nerves.

Encountering Pelican Town’s foppish beach dweller wasn’t part of the plan.

It wasn’t that she… disliked Elliott, per se. There was nothing wrong with the man, and he seemed a kind enough sort. But when she turned to look at him, with his perfectly coiffed stream of golden-blonde hair and stylishly cut maroon coat catching the sunlight, she felt a pang of overwhelming dread settle in her chest. He wasn’t a bad person, absolutely not, but he was a writer, and writers were perhaps the most intimidating creatures on the planet.

They were flighty. Prone to fancy. Intelligent, thoughtful, respectable, well-read, educated – everything she wasn’t, and talking to them just reminded her of days in a classroom, squirming uncomfortably as the teacher droned on about _participles_ and _parts of speech_ and other things that left her feeling like a drooling idiot.

Her brother was one thing, she could deal with him being of that feared class of being because he was _also_ a complete social disaster. But Elliott? _Elliott?_

He used hair gel! How could she deal with someone that put together?

“Um… hello,” Bear replied as he stopped in front of her, smiling in way that showed off his rows of perfectly pristine teeth. Hell. Did he notice that her pants were covered in grass stains and she hadn’t brushed her hair in a year? Probably. “Er… how… are you doing?”

“I’m wonderful! And extraordinarily happy to see you; I’d actually been hoping we’d pass by each other!

Bear stared down at him, her gaze fixated somewhere around his hairline. That boded poorly. That boded unbelievably poorly. She prayed he didn’t want to socialize. Yes, yes, she knew as a Warden she ought to bond with every member of Pelican Town… but she was failing enough with Shane already! She didn’t need to expose herself to Elliott just yet. Her heart couldn’t take it.

Still. Had to ask. “Er… Why were you looking for me?”

Elliott whipped out a rectangle of cream-colored paper from underneath his sweater-vest. It took Bear a moment to realize it was a letter, and immediately, she relaxed.

Oh.

So that’s what this was about.

Just as long as she didn’t want him to read it or anything, this was going to be fine. “…You have his address. You could mail these to him yourself, you know.”

“Yes, well,” Elliott coughed, his cheeks turning a bit pink. “I don’t… actually have a mailbox on the beach, and I felt like simply putting it in yours would be odd.”

“S’fine if you do. I don’t care.” Bear took the letter, flipping it between her fingers and feeling its weight. The paper bulged a bit, a thick heaviness in her palm which indicated that there was quite a collection of paper inside. “Think you might need another stamp for this, though. It’s pretty heavy.”

“…Really?” Elliott replied tentatively, squinting dubiously at the envelope. “I thought… you just put one on and it’d be fine?”

Bear shook her head, reminding herself one again that Elliott was a bit sheltered. “I’ve got more. Sending some writing?”

“Yes! Well, sort of. It’s the edited draft of my next few chapters – I wanted Fox’s feedback before I moved too far along.”

“I’ll make sure he gets it,” Bear assured him, feeling the letter again before tucking it away into her saddle-bag. She was careful to put it in a different pocket than the mushrooms she’d foraged along the way, though Fox – sharing at least some key traits with his older sister – wouldn’t care much.

She thought it was best to keep things as presentable as possible, though.

“Thank you so much! I appreciate it. Er, Bear, by any chance… do you know when he’s visiting again?”

“Ji-woo? Uhh.” Bear didn’t actually need time to think of the answer, she just felt so awkward around Elliott that she couldn’t make sentences sound right. “For the Fair. My family’s comin’. Wanna see the farm, and everything.”

“Oh!” Elliott beamed, cheeks turning rosy as he smiled. “That’s wonderful! And far sooner than I expected. Maybe he can see the full first draft in person! I’ve been writing so much lately.”

“Er, maybe,” Bear replied, praying that Elliott wouldn’t ask her if she wanted to see the full draft, because then she’d say yes just to be polite, and then she’d have to try to puzzle through Elliott’s florid, writerly writing. “Uh, anyway Elliott, I – “

From the corner of her eye, she caught a snatch of blue… and for the first time, Bear was actually _happy_ to see Shane.

He hadn’t spotted either of them by the bridge, his attention focused too intently on his shoes. He trudged along, hands in his pockets, his hair in its typical disheveled mop and his clothing in typical disarray. This was the first time she’d really _seen_ him since then, seen him as more than just his back on the street, and she stopped for a moment, staring at him, before she adjusted the strap on her bag and walked quickly away from Elliott. 

“Gotta go,” she said abruptly, not looking back. “Bye.”

“Oh, um - ” Elliott sounded taken off guard, but it was too late for Bear to go back and give him a proper farewell. She cursed herself internally, but tried not to let herself think about it.

There were other things to deal with, now.

“I’ll see you, Bear!”

Elliott’s voice seemed to attract Shane’s attention, because the man looked up, surprised, as Bear advanced upon him with a series of long strides. For a moment, she saw it on his face – _terror –_ but it was soon masked by an annoyed scowl.

“What do you want?” he grumbled as soon as she got close, and then gestured to the enormous building that they could both see in the distance. “Kinda on my way to work, here.”

“This will be brief,” Bear said, though she was half afraid it was a lie. Keep calm, she told herself. Just… treat him like he’s a friend. “I want you to reconsider about this weekend.”

“You’re right,” Shane replied, side-stepping around her and continuing on his way. “This _will_ be brief. No.”

Bear stood there, listening to his shuffling footsteps, before turning and looking at him as he slowly walked away. Already, her composure was starting to break – no, it’d been cracked since Elliott – but she swallowed, and overtook him again, walking beside him. “I don’t understand. Why?”

Shane didn’t look at her, and for a moment it seemed like he wasn’t going to reply at all, but his expression shifted as he let out a grumpy huff. What was that? Was that – guilt? There was definitely something odd in his voice. “Because I don’t need your fucking pity, okay? You and Jas can have fun on your own. I’d just be a downer.”

Downer, huh? “It would make her very, very happy if you were there.”

“Hah, yeah. Right. I’m not a flowers kinda guy, okay? Not all naturey like you two _._ ”

This confused Bear. She remembered that smile, that expression. It hadn’t been a lie, had it? Had she misinterpreted? Had she –

No.

Continue.

_Don’t back off._

“Why are you saying that?”

“Because it’s true?” Shane snapped, then stopped by the bridge, turning to glare up at her. Elliott had left already, which Bear was glad for. She didn’t really want to have a witness to this. He was already angry, with his hands clenched and figurative hackles raised. But she forced herself to look at him, really l _ook,_ and what she found there wasn’t true fury. It wasn’t her that had raised his ire.

…It was himself. Thinking about what he said, and how he was saying it, it only really made sense if he was angry at _himself._

“You said something like that on the day you visited me. What did you mean by that? Why…” she struggled. Oh hell, she was getting dizzy, the world around her blurring out and making Shane’s face all she could really see. “Why did that hurt you?

“I mean – “ he grumbled, smacking a hand to his forehead and then dragging it across his face. Yes, that was guilt. Part of her said, _but what if it’s not, you deluded fool?_ and she told that part of her to _shut up_ _and be quiet_ because she wasn’t going to let her own doubts ruin her right now. “I’m – fuck, _outdoorsy_ shit isn’t going to help me. Flowers, yoga, crystals, whatever the hell makes you feel better about your life? It’s not going to _work._ I’ve been a shitty person for a long time, and that’s not changing anytime soon, so it’d be better for you if you just left me alone now. You’re in for a whole lot of disappointment otherwise.”

“Why would I be disappointed?”

“Because you can't save me or... whatever! Normal shit won’t make me feel good anymore, and I'm not some fucking fixer-upper project for you to entertain yourself with, so leave me alone - alright?"

Wait.

…Wait.

_What?_

“Fix you?” Bear squinted. “You thought I wanted to… _cure you?”_

There was a profoundly awkward silence as the air was suddenly taken out of Shane’s proverbial sails. He stared at her, slack jawed, and then finally raised his hand up to rub the back of his head. “Uh… yeah? You literally said you wanted to show me that ‘goodness exists in this world’ or some other spiritual healing crap like that – like ‘positive auras’ and ‘feng shui’ will make things stop sucking for me.” He put air quotes around both of these deplorable concepts, then frowned up at her in confusion. “Sounds a lot like 'I want to cure you' to me."

For some reason, Bear wasn’t even offended. She was just baffled and lacked the appropriate words she wanted to describe her feelings about the situation. “Um. I know I can’t fix you. That’s not something you do to people. I just… wanted you to have a single nice day. That’s it." A pause. "That's all I meant to say. I... apologize for making you think differently.”

 _I can’t even fix myself,_ she thought, and cleared her throat awkwardly. He didn’t need to know about that.

"Oh," Shane said, deflating substantially at her apology. He searched for what to say for a few moments before finally settling on a mildly murmured, "I... see."

Neither of them looked at each other, and neither of them spoke for a time. The only sound was the bubbling water travelling under the bridge and the light shuffling of Shane’s jacket as he changed positions. Finally, after about half a minute of this torture, Shane finally broached the silence, his voice sounding careful, quiet, and odd. “That... actually sounds reasonable. Erm… Fuck. Uh.”

After letting out a heavy sigh, he turned away fully, and took a step onto the bridge. “I still don’t think it’s a good idea. You got a good thing going with Jas, y’know. She likes you. I’d just spoil the mood. So," She heard him breathe. It was shallow. Slight. "I'll see you, I guess.”

Bear’s throat went totally and completely dry. She’d thought – for a moment, she’d thought they had something there. That he was going to give in. That everything was going to work out.

There was a large part of Bear who wanted to just let him walk away. She’d done enough – right? They’d actually had a sort of semi-reasonable conversation, where Bear had admitted something and learned something about Shane in return. He’d thought she was trivializing his problems, so of course he’d get angry – and he’d even given her something of an apology, and didn't that mean something? She didn’t really need it, she told herself, because she had messed up and therefore it wasn’t really his fault, but that was still progress. It was enough. She could leave it at that and put off interacting with him again until a later date.

…But then she imagined Jas’ expression when it was just Bear and her in front of the fairy roses. She thought about her missing him, about how he should _be there_ , experiencing things with her – and she thought about Evelyn’s voice, telling her that she didn’t need to treat Shane like he’d shatter to dust when she touched him.

What would she do when her brother didn’t want to take a bath? What would she do when her mom was trying to steal a taste of dinner before it was ready? What would she do when Rasmodius was being a know-it-all about something dangerous, or when Vincent was about to do something egregiously unwise and anger his mother?

She’d use force. Gentle, but persuasive force.

Before Shane could move any farther, Bear stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder. He froze when she touched him, spinning around and snapping his gaze to her face, but he didn’t have long to look. Forcing herself not to hesitate, Bear leaned down and _picked him up_ – one arm under his knees, the other supporting his back – like she was a mother hefting a child who didn’t want to go to school in the morning. He shrieked immediately, a reflexive reaction, and he tried to shove himself away, but she was too strong, too _big,_ and he couldn’t pry himself out of her grasp no matter how much he kicked and flailed. Half turning, Bear looked down at him with cold, unflappable severity as she held him over the water.

 “If you do not promise to attend a princess party with myself and Jas, I promise you, I will drop you straight into the river.”

“AHH,” Shane screamed, then planted his palm into the side of her face and shoved. “ARE YOU CRAZY? PUT ME DOWN!”

She did not put him down, though her face was turned to the side by his hand. “Say you’ll go.”

“What the fuck? _No!_ **Why do you fucking care, you crazy-ass bitch?”** He kicked, and screamed again, but his voice only echoed uselessly off the small street. There was no helping him now. Even if there was, who cared enough about him to intervene? “Seriously, put me the fuck down!”

Bear had to wait for him to run out of air before she could say anything else. “I am doing this because you are being childish. It is for one afternoon, and you will stay out of the bar long enough to indulge your goddaughter for one single day.  **Understood?”**

“This isn’t your problem!” Tears had started to prick at his eyes, and he pulled his hand away from her face. “Stop trying to fuck with my life! I’m a screw-up, okay? Just leave me alone!”

This was it. _This was her breaking point._

“It is my problem!” Bear shouted back, raising her voice for the first time in… forever _._ “I love Jas, so her feelings are my problem! And stop acting like running away is somehow protecting her from disappointment! Your family doesn’t hate you, Shane! I don’t hate you! I just – “

His expression had changed, and hers had too, her eyes squeezing shut in pain and her teeth pressing into her lip. What had Evelyn said, be honest? She was being honest now. Maybe too honest, but there was no stopping herself anymore. “I’m scared. I’m used to saying wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, and I don’t look like what people want me to look like, so they never like me very much. I’m – I don’t hate you; _I’m just scared of you._ So stop thinking that you’re some kind of burden. You’re only hurting the people who care about you when you do that.”

Bear kept her eyes closed, kept her world dark, and gritted her teeth so hard that it felt like they were going to crack. She could feel herself shaking slightly – not from the strain of holding Shane, but from sheer terror. Why had she said that? What was she doing? This was stupid, this was idiotic, what had she gotten herself into, she should have just been slow and patient and let him leave, and –

…And she felt something on her face again, but it was soft, gentle, accompanied by Shane whispering her name.

Bear.

It was the first time he’d said it, she realized, cracking open her eyes and looking down at him. It’d always been farmer before, or just addressing her by  _you,_ a fact which she hadn’t really realized until she put together just how strange it was to hear her name in his voice. And the touch – it was just his hand, grazed lightly across her cheek, but for some reason she found herself looking directly at him.

His face was red. His mouth was pursed. And the deep, dark color of his eyes – like the burnt caramel on the bottom of a pan – seemed gentle in the light.

She felt weird.

What was this?

She was so lost.

“I – I know,” he managed, his expression one of pained despair. “I know they care. And I wish they didn’t, I wish they hated me, because then I wouldn’t have to feel bad about being the way I am.”

Bear stood there on that bridge, looking down at him, and for some reason, she didn’t even feel like she _could_ look away. “Please come. Just make it one day. That’ll be a day better than you would have done otherwise.”

“But what good is that, if I can’t do another day?”

She let out a breath, and adjusted her grip on him. “You should worry about that day when it's here.”

She wasn’t holding him out over the water anymore – she didn’t even realize when she’d stopped doing that. His cheek was pressed against her arm, and she could feel the warmth of it, even through the fabric. It was a nice feeling. She didn’t understand why.

“I’ve tried that before. It always fails. I don’t… I really don’t think I can.”

“…I was serious ‘bout dropping you into the river,” she replied, though she didn’t really sound serious anymore. Just kind of exhausted. “Please. They’re very beautiful.”

Silence. It stretched on, and on, until Shane finally said, “If I say okay, will you let me go to work?”

“Yes.” Part of her supposed she ought to feel relieved, but most of her was just running on autopilot. “But if you don’t come by twelve on Sunday, I will come find you.”

A heavy, heavy sigh. “Okay. You got me. Will you let me go now?”

Bear set him down then, shifting him and bending so the soles of his shoes could touch the ground. He put his hand on her arm, steadying himself as he stood, and wore a complicated expression as he looked down at the cobblestone bridge. He seemed like he was struggling to say something – contemplating some words, or figuring out how to phrase his thoughts – but then in his fidgeting, he finally glanced at his watch and jumped.

“Oh. Oh fuck. I’m – I’m later than I thought, uh – “

He took a few steps backwards, looking from Bear to Joja Mart down the way, and then finally said, “I – I’m – “

Bear understood, and she gestured to the building before them. “’S fine. Go on.”

Shane… seemed relieved, and his expression loosened before he turned and bolted. He didn't even say goodbye; he just ran.

Bear watched him sprint to the doors, watched him adjust his jacket before he went in, and watched for a little longer, staring absently at the distressing blight on Pelican Town’s appearance and, beyond that, the walled off expanse of trees forming the forested border of her home. She stared, without really seeing anything, because the minute Shane had left, everything _hit her,_ settling into her bones like a dull, throbbing hum.

She swallowed. Something crawled up her throat, and she swallowed again, before she turned and began to walk

He’d agreed (what had she just done?) He’d said yes (she’d picked him up and threatened him.) She’d told him things (why had she told him things, he’d judge her, he’d use it against her, he’d think she was an embarrassment.)  

How could she face him?

What would she do now?

_What had she just done?_

Bear squeezed her eyes shut, trying to shut out that voice, but it was buried into her spine and into her hands. It gummed up her thoughts, until they were just a ceaseless, repeating drone, and in what felt like no time at all – she couldn’t even remember the travel – she looked up and found herself at Evelyn’s door.

She stared at it.

It was red.

She raised her meaty hand to the door, and then knocked. She stood there, swaying, and was about to knock again when it opened.

There was Evelyn. Her face had wrinkles, her hair was in a knot.

Her eyes looked kind, as always.

“Hi,” Bear said, her voice dull and flat. “Can I hide in your bathroom?”

“…Of course, dearie,” Evelyn said, and stepped aside to beckon her in. Bear would probably spend the next hour comfortably beneath her sink, trying to pretend that the world wasn't collapsing around her.


	9. A Story of a Sunday Spent in Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY SO it's been a hot minute. I'm sorry about that! I definitely haven't abandoned this story; I've just been busy with so much (like college! and a new job! and moving!) and I have had so little time and energy to write. But I've also been playing Stardew Valley again and I've had this sitting in my drafts for awhile, so even though it's very much not perfect, I thought if I posted it up I might get moving on writing again.
> 
> As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy this very, very late update!

Marnie had dressed Shane in his Sunday best, and when he looked in the mirror, he didn’t recognize the man he saw staring back at him.

Gelled hair. Ironed black dress pants. A suit-jacket that was clear of beer stains – Yoba. He’d worn this to their wedding, hadn’t he? Blaire and Connor’s. He was surprised he hadn’t thrown it out, surprised this fancy set of clothing had made it all the way to Pelican Town with him. Though, he supposed he’d been too poor then – poor now – to get rid of anything, despite the memories seeped into the fabric like incense in the pews at mass.

It made him uncomfortable, but Marnie had straightened his tie so expertly that he felt bad taking it off.

It felt a bit like a mask, these clothes. Like for a little bit, he was pretending to be someone presentable – and that’s honestly what he was doing, wasn’t it? Putting on a veneer of sophistication so he didn’t utterly embarrass himself in front of his goddaughter and that damn farmer.

_I mean, you're not wearing a bra._

Shane smacked his palm to his face, and then dragged it across his cheek. Too fucking late for that, he supposed. He’d already vomited on her, what more could he do?

It would be easier if he could just resent her properly; if she had some horrible quality that justified his petty ire. He’d tried to engineer one, assuming that she was some overbearing hippie who wanted to fix his emotional problems with peace and love and flowers, but she wasn’t even like that. Overall, she’d been perfectly reasonable - if a little bit peculiar - and okay, the nature spirit thing was weird, but he didn’t have anything against that really.

In the end, he just hated that she was a better role model for Jas than him.

She didn’t even hate him in return, even though honestly, she really should. He was a shit-fuck moron who’d gotten sick on her, yelled at her, and insulted her, and in response, she’d tried to comfort him. Sure, by threatening to drop him in the water, but that was honestly a pretty reasonable response to his bullshit, wasn’t it? Also, being picked up was kind of ho-

 _Nope,_ Shane thought, papping himself on his face. _Nope, nope, nopey-nope nope._ _Not happening, Shane Frendach. We_ _’re not doing this._

She was scary, not cute. She loomed, not… whatever the hell that was, her showing a moment of emotional vulnerability where she admitted that it bothered her what people thought about her. He’d seen an expression on her face. Fear. And in that moment, she’d been humanized to him, as if her dragging his ass to the doctor, serving him some unfairly delicious pie, and getting excited over ice-cream wasn’t enough.

He’d touched her face like a complete nut-job because he’d wanted to offer her something that she’d offered him – a small measure of attempted comfort. A tiny slice of human contact, and the affirmation that he understood what she was saying, while admitting something that he hated to admit, even to himself.

Shane wanted people to hate him, because it was so much better than bringing them disappointment.

Letting out a heavy sigh, he turned away from the mirror, and stepped out of the bathroom. Marnie was waiting for him, with a smile that weakened a bit once she got a good look at him. “It would be better if you’d shaved.”

“What,” he said dryly, rubbing at his jawline. “You don’t think the stubble makes me look ruggedly handsome?”

She just sighed in response, letting her crossed arms drop to her sides. “You don’t do this very often; don’t you think you could go all the way?”

Shane snorted, but he didn’t have a chance to reply, because the door down the hall slammed open and a fluffy pink ballerina burst forth.

Jas had, most certainly, gone all the way. Not only was she wearing a voluminous sparkly tutu, but she’d also donned a pair of fairy wings, some rainbow tie-die tights, a purple shirt with stars on it, and a silver plastic crown that Shane had gotten for her at the dollar store. The only thing possibly wrong with the ensemble were her worn shoes, whose glitter was partially obscured by dirt and wear, but otherwise she was the perfect example of a fairy princess from the rainbow isle.

Jas did a twirl and a bow, which Shane and Marnie clapped politely for.

“You look lovely, dear!” Marnie fawned, a beaming smile spread across her face. “I’m sure the fairies are going to love you.”

“Do you think?” Jas grinned, and well, if that didn’t just make Shane feel all disgustingly soft and mushy inside.

“I do. Now, I’ve got the basket all full of goodies and ready to go… Which of you wants to carry it?”

Shane volunteered, because of course Marnie had packed too much, and he didn’t want Jas to tire herself out.

 

* * *

 

Calling Bear’s farm stunning would be a gross underestimation of the truth.

It was gorgeous. Spectacular. Superb. Breathtaking, incredible – so captivating that Shane had to stop there on the stone pathway that had been lain through massive aisles of drifting corn and fat, plump pumpkins and stare in slack-jawed amazement. He was lucky that he didn’t lose hold of the basket. If he had, he probably would have had to throw himself into that pretty little pond and drowned himself out of embarrassment. (In a way, it was funny that those thoughts could crawl into him even at a time like this, when he was so struck by beauty that he could barely even think. That was a testament to how insidious they were, and how thoroughly his heart had been corrupted by the machinations of his own brain.)

Perhaps it was the lazy way the bees drifted from flower to flower, fat little buzzing dots peppering the pastel field. Perhaps it was the colors, a motley of gentle hues – pinks and purples and intercroppings of brilliant cyan, viewed across the glint and glimmer of barely moving water. Perhaps it was the trees with their apples, globes of red framed by a halo of glossy leaves, or the canvas of yellow and brown behind them as the forest decorated itself with its autumn raiment.

Or perhaps it was the farmer herself, draped in sunlight and raising her hand to greet them. She looked so steady, so stable. So unbreakable as she curved her hand around her mouth to help her voice carry and then shouted, “Come around! I’ll meet you.”

Shane hurriedly shook his head and resumed his pace, even though he was left in the dust by Jas, who sprinted on ahead to (presumably) give Bear some manner of energetic hug. He told himself that his face wasn’t red, and that any breathlessness he felt was just from the walk.

Denial came easy to him. It was just a standard means of navigating his own existence.

She met them approximately half-way, or more precisely, Jas had distracted her at an approximate halfway point and she hadn’t yet recollected herself by the time Shane arrived. His goddaughter was draped in the tall woman’s arms, like a princess being held aloft by the prince in a fairy tale. It didn’t matter that Bear wasn’t particularly handsomely dressed, wearing jeans and a t-shirt (though from the metallic printing on the front and the lack of dirt-stains on the caramel fabric, she’d clearly made at least somewhat of an effort.) Bear’s noble qualities transcended things like effort and physical form. There was just a dedication, and dutifulness to her very being that gave her a royal quality.

She reminded him of those stories Blaire used to read Jas, the ones with strange creatures that beautiful girls would find in the forest who turned out to be secret, cursed royalty. The thought made him nervous for some reason – almost like he wasn’t quite stepping into a reality that he knew. It also made him oddly grateful for the mask the suit provided, though the feeling of being profoundly overdressed prickled over him.

“There he is!” Jas pointed at Shane, calling Bear’s attention to him with an imperial point. “He’s kind of slow sometimes! But doesn’t he look handsome?”

“Um,” Bear said, staring somewhere over his shoulder. He could see her try to focus on him for a moment, but she failed to hold his gaze for long. “Yes. He is.”

For some reason, the skin underneath Shane’s collar felt hot. Was that shame? Probably. “Yeah, uh… sorry, Marnie may have made this into kind of a big deal.”

Bear lightly set Jas down, taking the opportunity to stare at the ground.  “I… might have a button-up somewhere. And a tie.”

For some reason, the idea of Bear wearing a collared shirt did not strike him as immediately laughable, and instead was something he carefully had to avoid thinking about. It was probably because, for some inexplicable reason, his mind immediately supplied an image of shirtless Bear which was an entirely inappropriate thing to dwell on and he really, really needed to stop. Not that it meant anything, mind. It was just an intrusive thought he was having because he was embarrassed about an awkward situation.

Yeah.

That’s all it was.

_It really meant nothing._

“I think what you’re wearing is pretty,” Jas said as she settled on the ground, her gentle chirruping voice brightening the mood as usual. “It’s shiny. Fairies love shiny things!”

“This is true.” There was a brief pause, and Bear’s eyebrows softened slightly in that way they only seemed to do when she was around Jas. “But they’ll like you the most, because their favorite thing is sparkly dancers in tutus.”

At that, Jas lit up, and then immediately began barraging Bear with an assortment of questions, such as _what kind of dancing do they like best?_ and _do you have any stories about fairy balls?_ Bear took this all in patiently, waiting until Jas had lost some of her steam, and then she glanced back towards the flower-ridden field. “How ‘bout I tell you about them while we eat? I’ve got some stuff laid out for us.”

Jas agreed cheerfully, and with that Shane was following Bear down the path deeper into the farm. The smell was what struck him the most, really. Bright and floral and delicate, but underneath it all there was so much else, the scent of the trees intermixed with cut grass and an aroma of something sweet he couldn’t really place.

It was immediately clear that Bear had gone to great lengths to arrange everything very nicely. Adjusting the basket he carried, he looked over a pastel striped picnic blanket laid out with a full tea-set - silver trays and all - and an arrangement of sweets that reflexively made his mouth water. Pies, cakes, cookies, glistening treats laced with icing and apples and caramelized pears, and Shane couldn’t help but wonder if Marnie’s packed basket had been the definition of excessive.

Jas was immediately delighted, so much so that she hesitated to sit down, like she was afraid if she touched anything it’d all turn to ash and crumble away. Shane knew the feeling. This was… too good to be true.

It kind of broke his heart to see, because Jas belonged here. She shouldn’t look like that. It was him that didn’t fit in, and perhaps that was why he sat down without protest and opened Marnie’s basket, as if adding his aunt’s cooking into the mix somehow designated a shared space for all three of them. She’d packed the usuals - egg salad, egg sandwiches, deviled eggs and to add some variety, a very pleasant looking quiche, and he set everything about, not being too careful about the arrangement. As he was finishing, he noticed Bear watching him out of the corner of his eye.

“…Shoulda probably made real food too.”

At first, he was completely baffled by her soft, mumbled statement, but then he took a moment to actually think about it. Everything he could see was some variety of sweet, and while each one looked astoundingly delicious in its own right, a blanket full of confections did not a meal make. It also occurred to him just how much there was, and how not a single piece of it looked like anything from Joja. So that meant the only conclusion he could draw was - “Y _ou made all this?_ _”_

Shane had already gotten his answer by the way Bear averted her eyes, but Jas’ pleased declaration of, “Yeah, Bear’s a great cook!” confirmed it.

That was staggering. He wasn’t a baker by any stretch of the imagination (unless one counted getting baked in the car in high school) but he knew a single pie took an hour at least. Maybe more considering how the crusts had little hearts and the cakes were topped with icing florets, and a very basic calculation revealed that unless Bear’s weird nature sacrifices gave her the ability to keep food looking perfectly fresh for days after she’d made it, she had to have spent hours preparing the night before.

“How?” Shane managed, struggling with the concept of it. It was one thing if she was a baker with a professional kitchen, but he’d seen her set up. It was tiny! How did one person manage to create _all of this?_

Bear’s only response was a half-hearted shrug. “…’S just a hobby.”

Shane was reminded of the glow that shimmered in her amber eyes when she talked about her plans for ice-cream, and once again he couldn’t help but think, _what the hell, that_ _’s adorable._

He then spent the next ten minutes trying to rationalize that traitorous thought. This was… going to be rough.

This was going to be really, really rough.

 

* * *

 

Okay. Maybe only kind of rough.

Sure. This situation sucked, because his life sucked and he was an unrepentant screwup who was currently hanging out with someone he had puked on (no, he wasn’t going to get over that anytime soon.) On the other hand, there was nothing better in life than a good food coma…and by Yoba, this was a good food coma.

He had never tasted apples so sweet and soft and savory, whose molten cinnamon glory so perfectly filled a buttery pie crust to the brim. He’d never had icing so perfectly light and airy, whose delicate flavor balanced the sharp bites of cranberry hidden within a dense poppy-seed cake. He’d never even begun to comprehend how refreshing a cup of black tea would be when paired with pear tarts and chocolate cupcakes filled with blackberry jam, and nothing in his life had remotely prepared him for pumpkin pie that _didn_ _’t_ taste like wet mush. The lemon cookies were heaven. The apple crumpets were divine. The rhubarb pie was actually a holy relic, and even though he felt like he was going to burst, he still couldn’t quite regret that fourth piece of unnamable persimmon pastry that would forever grace his most pleasant dreams.

Don’t even get him started on Marnie’s contributions, because Shane would never not be impressed by her ability to endlessly turn eggs into new culinary marvels. As Shane lay on the blanket, the smell of flowers wafting on the breeze, he felt so... at peace. And it wasn’t just because he was too sleepy to really think straight - it was also from seeing Jas so damn happy.

The farmer told good stories; even Shane had to admit that. Her tales of far off fairy lands, of princes and princesses and curses and _magic,_ magic so powerful it could turn paupers into kings, magic so subtle it could hide within the length of a needle, magic so omnipresent that it explained why the sea was salty and why clouds traveled across the sky, well - it was… captivating in a nostalgic kind of way.

It reminded him of better times. He was sure it reminded Jas of better times, too.

Yeah, okay, it was kind of stupid and silly - all this talk about sleeping queens in ice caves and ancient pacts and stuff that didn’t exist. And okay, it - it still wasn’t an awesome feeling, seeing Jas smile at Bear like she was a fairy herself and having that crawling jealousy still wriggle around inside him, but the sun took some of its bite away. The pleasant fullness in his stomach made it less sharp, less painful. And knowing that Bear was anxious too…

It made it so much easier to deal with. Maybe that was kind of fucked up, being happy that Bear had problems too, but it was also less intimidating than being around someone who was unbearably perfect. She was a person, not an ideal.

Without all of that humming in the background, he could lie on the grass, eyes closed and sunning himself, and focus better on the stories themselves. The deep rumble of her voice was actually extraordinarily pleasant to listen to when she had the mind to talk. It had a soothing bass quality to it that reminded him a bit of antique furniture, polished wood, and Connor laughing at some joke he’d made about the pretentiousness of vinyls. It wasn’t florid, it wasn’t impenetrably loquacious, it wasn’t… embarrassingly ostentatious the way some storytellers could sound. She spoke plainly, clearly, like she knew these old things personally. Like they’d left some mark on her soul.

It was like she was speaking about memories, and that made them feel less like pointless, intangible whimsy. She could make the most improbable things seem _real._ That must be why Jas liked hearing them so much, honestly. In this space, Shane almost expected a real living fairy to flutter down to introduce herself and take them to the land of the pixie queen.

Shane did not feel like he belonged here. His presence was soley dependent on that of Jas, and that sensation still weighed on him. But he also had to admit, he minded being here a whole heck of a lot less than he thought he would.

He wasn’t a parasite. He wasn’t a project to be fixed up and made palatable. He wasn’t an uninvited guest who’d stumbled drunk into the parlor during tea, and sure, he was an awkward add-on, a plus-one added because occasionally he needed to kinda act like a parent sometimes, but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe it was okay to just be here, enjoy the food and the ambiance, knowing that his presence - for some absurd reason - made his goddaughter more happy.

That her being able to shake him slightly, asking him what kind of story she should ask for next, brought her immense joy.

(He tried to ignore the sharp prick in his heart, knowing that it was probably because she missed her mom and the stories she’d tell so, so very much.)

Ultimately, Shane had come to the conclusion that this was just another thing in a long string of things that didn’t really have to have that much meaning to them. His relationship with Bear was awkward, but it was okay if it was awkward, because whether or not they liked each other didn’t matter. What mattered was Jas and Jas’ continued happiness.

For Jas to be happy, he didn’t have to be friends with Bear. He didn’t have to make a good impression. He didn’t have to acknowledge that weird funny feeling he got in that moment when she’d picked him up, telling him secret things and him telling her secret things in return. Nothing had to change. All he had to do was be, and while just… _being_ was hard, here in the sunshine with the flowers crowded around him, it all seemed so much easier just for a moment. Just for a breath, all of his problems were so much farther away. He might have even drifted off a little.

When he realized that, Shane sleepily opened his eyes, and then his breath caught in his throat.

Her eyes were amber, golden amber, like warm honey filled with the fire of the sun, and she was looking straight down at him with a soft expression he couldn’t even begin to name. It wasn’t pity, he knew. It wasn’t charity. It wasn’t even sympathy or that awful, condescending self-satisfaction that he sometimes saw in the faces of people donating money at church. It was just - warm.

Gentle.

 _Happy,_ happy in a way he hadn’t seen for so long, a happiness he’d never expected - never could have imagined - to see directed towards him by anyone, but most of all it was something he’d never expected to be directed at him by her.

It wasn’t even like it was drastic, just the faintest upturn of her mouth, just the slight relaxation of her eyebrows and the glimmer of compassion in those honey-hued eyes. It was so subtle, so slight, that if he hadn’t been agonizing about her (which, let’s be frank, he _had been_ ) he might not have even noticed or understood its significance. She was looking at him. She was looking straight at him, but not in a way that pierced him or judged him for his rampant shittiness. How could he ever have thought that she’d judge him, even? In the best way, her eyes reminded him of that of an animal, and the way that he always felt so much more at peace around things that didn’t think he was the worst kind of garbage imaginable.

Thunderstruck, starstruck, Shane met Bear’s gaze, and she didn’t look away, instead reaching out to tuck a pale pink blossom behind his ear.

It occurred to him that the world was so quiet now. He could hear the wind in the grass and the leaves of the trees rustle in the breeze, but that seemed so far away. She was above him, and beyond her was the sky, and in that moment three thoughts passed through Shane’s mind.

The first was, _holy hell, she_ _’s beautiful._

The second was, _please look at me like that forever._

The third was, _fuck me, I_ _’m screwed,_ and with that Shane knew that pretty much everything he’d told himself today was a lie.

Something was changing. Him being here meant something. This wasn’t just about Jas, and all that jealousy and resentment was just a mask for a deeper sort of fear. Sure, he’d forgotten what it was like for the world to be okay, and that was terrifying and awful and made it impossible to do anything with his life. But if he got a taste of it, got a taste of happiness, then it’d be even worse when it was all ripped away from him.

That was why stories and flowers and everything lovely made him so very insecure. He knew how fragile they were, how easy it was for them to crumble to dust and be buried in a casket under the earth.

Shane was scared. Shane wanted to cry. Shane wanted a drink so badly it hurt, but even more than that though, he wanted to belong in this place, wanted Bear - in that agonizingly pure way of hers - to keep looking at him like he _mattered._

Like he could still find what he was looking for in this world, even though he’d lost his way to it a long, long time ago.


End file.
